argumentative speech about war on drugs

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The War On Drugs: 50 Years Later

After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us'.

During the War on Drugs, the Brownsville neighborhood in New York City saw some of the highest rates of incarceration in the U.S., as Black and Hispanic men were sent to prison for lengthy prison sentences, often for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

During the War on Drugs, the Brownsville neighborhood in New York City saw some of the highest rates of incarceration in the U.S., as Black and Hispanic men were sent to prison for lengthy prison sentences, often for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes.

When Aaron Hinton walked through the housing project in Brownsville on a recent summer afternoon, he voiced love and pride for this tightknit, but troubled working-class neighborhood in New York City where he grew up.

He pointed to a community garden, the lush plots of vegetables and flowers tended by volunteers, and to the library where he has led after-school programs for kids.

But he also expressed deep rage and sorrow over the scars left by the nation's 50-year-long War on Drugs. "What good is it doing for us?" Hinton asked.

Revisiting Two Cities At The Front Line Of The War On Drugs

Critics Say Chauvin Defense 'Weaponized' Stigma For Black Americans With Addiction

As the United States' harsh approach to drug use and addiction hits the half-century milestone, this question is being asked by a growing number of lawmakers, public health experts and community leaders.

In many parts of the U.S., some of the most severe policies implemented during the drug war are being scaled back or scrapped altogether.

Hinton, a 37-year-old community organizer and activist, said the reckoning is long overdue. He described watching Black men like himself get caught up in drugs year after year and swept into the nation's burgeoning prison system.

"They're spending so much money on these prisons to keep kids locked up," Hinton said, shaking his head. "They don't even spend a fraction of that money sending them to college or some kind of school."

Aaron Hinton, a 37-year-old veteran activist and community organizer, said it's clear Brownsville needed help coping with the cocaine, heroin and other drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s. His own family was devastated by addiction. Brian Mann hide caption

Aaron Hinton, a 37-year-old veteran activist and community organizer, said it's clear Brownsville needed help coping with the cocaine, heroin and other drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s. His own family was devastated by addiction.

Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He said Brownsville needed help coping with cocaine, heroin and drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s.

His own family was scarred by addiction.

"I've known my mom to be a drug user my whole entire life," Hinton said. "She chose to run the streets and left me with my great-grandmother."

Four years ago, his mom overdosed and died after taking prescription painkillers, part of the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Hinton said her death sealed his belief that tough drug war policies and aggressive police tactics would never make his family or his community safer.

The nation pivots (slowly) as evidence mounts against the drug war

During months of interviews for this project, NPR found a growing consensus across the political spectrum — including among some in law enforcement — that the drug war simply didn't work.

"We have been involved in the failed War on Drugs for so very long," said retired Maj. Neill Franklin, a veteran with the Baltimore City Police and the Maryland State Police who led drug task forces for years.

He now believes the response to drugs should be handled by doctors and therapists, not cops and prison guards. "It does not belong in our wheelhouse," Franklin said during a press conference this week.

Aaron Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He has watched many Black men like himself get caught up in drugs year after year, swept into the nation's criminal justice system. Brian Mann/NPR hide caption

Aaron Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He has watched many Black men like himself get caught up in drugs year after year, swept into the nation's criminal justice system.

Some prosecutors have also condemned the drug war model, describing it as ineffective and racially biased.

"Over the last 50 years, we've unfortunately seen the 'War on Drugs' be used as an excuse to declare war on people of color, on poor Americans and so many other marginalized groups," said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement sent to NPR.

On Tuesday, two House Democrats introduced legislation that would decriminalize all drugs in the U.S., shifting the national response to a public health model. The measure appears to have zero chance of passage.

But in much of the country, disillusionment with the drug war has already led to repeal of some of the most punitive policies, including mandatory lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent drug users.

In recent years, voters and politicians in 17 states — including red-leaning Alaska and Montana — and the District of Columbia have backed the legalization of recreational marijuana , the most popular illicit drug, a trend that once seemed impossible.

Last November, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small quantities of all drugs , including heroin and methamphetamines.

Many critics say the course correction is too modest and too slow.

"The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization.

She said the criminal justice model failed to address the underlying need for jobs, health care and safe housing that spur addiction.

Indeed, much of the drug war's architecture remains intact. Federal spending on drugs — much of it devoted to interdiction — is expected to top $37 billion this year.

The Coronavirus Crisis

Drug overdose deaths spiked to 88,000 during the pandemic, white house says.

The U.S. still incarcerates more people than any other nation, with nearly half of the inmates in federal prison held on drug charges .

But the nation has seen a significant decline in state and federal inmate populations, down by a quarter from the peak of 1.6 million in 2009 to roughly 1.2 million last year .

There has also been substantial growth in public funding for health care and treatment for people who use drugs, due in large part to passage of the Affordable Care Act .

"The best outcomes come when you treat the substance use disorder [as a medical condition] as opposed to criminalizing that person and putting them in jail or prison," said Dr. Nora Volkow, who has been head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse since 2003.

Volkow said data shows clearly that the decision half a century ago to punish Americans who struggle with addiction was "devastating ... not just to them but actually to their families."

From a bipartisan War on Drugs to Black Lives Matter

Wounds left by the drug war go far beyond the roughly 20.3 million people who have a substance use disorder .

The campaign — which by some estimates cost more than $1 trillion — also exacerbated racial divisions and infringed on civil liberties in ways that transformed American society.

Frederique, with the Drug Policy Alliance, said the Black Lives Matter movement was inspired in part by cases that revealed a dangerous attitude toward drugs among police.

In Derek Chauvin's murder trial, the former officer's defense claimed aggressive police tactics were justified because of small amounts of fentanyl in George Floyd's body. Critics described the argument as an attempt to "weaponize" Floyd's substance use disorder and jurors found Chauvin guilty.

Breonna Taylor, meanwhile, was shot and killed by police in her home during a drug raid . She wasn't a suspect in the case.

"We need to end the drug war not just for our loved ones that are struggling with addiction, but we need to remove the excuse that that is why law enforcement gets to invade our space ... or kill us," Frederique said.

The United States has waged aggressive campaigns against substance use before, most notably during alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s.

The modern drug war began with a symbolic address to the nation by President Richard Nixon on June 17, 1971.

Speaking from the White House, Nixon declared the federal government would now treat drug addiction as "public enemy No. 1," suggesting substance use might be vanquished once and for all.

"In order to fight and defeat this enemy," Nixon said, "it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive."

President Richard Nixon's speech on June 17, 1971, marked the symbolic start of the modern drug war. In the decades that followed Democrats and Republicans embraced ever-tougher laws penalizing people with addiction.

Studies show from the outset drug laws were implemented with a stark racial bias , leading to unprecedented levels of mass incarceration for Black and brown men .

As recently as 2018, Black men were nearly six times more likely than white men to be locked up in state or federal correctional facilities, according to the U.S. Justice Department .

Researchers have long concluded the pattern has far-reaching impacts on Black families, making it harder to find employment and housing, while also preventing many people of color with drug records from voting .

In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine , Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war.

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black," Ehrlichman said. "But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

Despite those concerns, Democrats and Republicans partnered on the drug war decade after decade, approving ever-more-severe laws, creating new state and federal bureaucracies to interdict drugs, and funding new armies of police and federal agents.

At times, the fight on America's streets resembled an actual war, especially in poor communities and communities of color.

Police units carried out drug raids with military-style hardware that included body armor, assault weapons and tanks equipped with battering rams.

President Richard Nixon explaining aspects of the special message sent to the Congress on June 17, 1971, asking for an extra $155 million for a new program to combat the use of drugs. He labeled drug abuse "a national emergency." Harvey Georges/AP hide caption

President Richard Nixon explaining aspects of the special message sent to the Congress on June 17, 1971, asking for an extra $155 million for a new program to combat the use of drugs. He labeled drug abuse "a national emergency."

"What we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam, not another limited war fought on the cheap," declared then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., in 1989.

Biden, who chaired the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, later co-authored the controversial 1994 crime bill that helped fund a vast new complex of state and federal prisons, which remains the largest in the world.

On the campaign trail in 2020, Biden stopped short of repudiating his past drug policy ideas but said he now believes no American should be incarcerated for addiction. He also endorsed national decriminalization of marijuana.

While few policy experts believe the drug war will come to a conclusive end any time soon, the end of bipartisan backing for punitive drug laws is a significant development.

More drugs bring more deaths and more doubts

Adding to pressure for change is the fact that despite a half-century of interdiction, America's streets are flooded with more potent and dangerous drugs than ever before — primarily methamphetamines and the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

"Back in the day, when we would see 5, 10 kilograms of meth, that would make you a hero if you made a seizure like that," said Matthew Donahue, the head of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As U.S. Corporations Face Reckoning Over Prescription Opioids, CEOs Keep Cashing In

"Now it's common for us to see 100-, 200- and 300-kilogram seizures of meth," he added. "It doesn't make a dent to the price."

Efforts to disrupt illegal drug supplies suffered yet another major blow last year after Mexican officials repudiated drug war tactics and began blocking most interdiction efforts south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It's a national health threat, it's a national safety threat," Donahue told NPR.

Last year, drug overdoses hit a devastating new record of 90,000 deaths , according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The drug war failed to stop the opioid epidemic

Critics say the effectiveness of the drug war model has been called into question for another reason: the nation's prescription opioid epidemic.

Beginning in the late 1990s, some of the nation's largest drug companies and pharmacy chains invested heavily in the opioid business.

State and federal regulators and law enforcement failed to intervene as communities were flooded with legally manufactured painkillers, including Oxycontin.

"They were utterly failing to take into account diversion," said West Virginia Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who sued the DEA for not curbing opioid production quotas sooner.

"It's as close to a criminal act as you can find," Morrisey said.

Courtney Hessler, a reporter for The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch in West Virgina, has covered the opioid epidemic. As a child she wound up in foster care after her mother became addicted to opioids. "You know there's thousands of children that grew up the way that I did. These people want answers," Hessler told NPR. Brian Mann/NPR hide caption

Courtney Hessler, a reporter for The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch in West Virgina, has covered the opioid epidemic. As a child she wound up in foster care after her mother became addicted to opioids. "You know there's thousands of children that grew up the way that I did. These people want answers," Hessler told NPR.

One of the epicenters of the prescription opioid epidemic was Huntington, a small city in West Virginia along the Ohio River hit hard by the loss of factory and coal jobs.

"It was pretty bad. Eighty-one million opioid pills over an eight-year period came into this area," said Courtney Hessler, a reporter with The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch.

Public health officials say 1 in 10 residents in the area still battle addiction. Hessler herself wound up in foster care after her mother struggled with opioids.

In recent months, she has reported on a landmark opioid trial that will test who — if anyone — will be held accountable for drug policies that failed to keep families and communities safe.

"I think it's important. You know there's thousands of children that grew up the way that I did," Hessler said. "These people want answers."

A needle disposal box at the Cabell-Huntington Health Department sits in the front parking lot in 2019 in Huntington, W.Va. The city is experiencing a surge in HIV cases related to intravenous drug use following a recent opioid crisis in the state. Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption

A needle disposal box at the Cabell-Huntington Health Department sits in the front parking lot in 2019 in Huntington, W.Va. The city is experiencing a surge in HIV cases related to intravenous drug use following a recent opioid crisis in the state.

During dozens of interviews, community leaders told NPR that places like Huntington, W.Va., and Brownsville, N.Y., will recover from the drug war and rebuild.

They predicted many parts of the country will accelerate the shift toward a public health model for addiction: treating drug users more often like patients with a chronic illness and less often as criminals.

But ending wars is hard and stigma surrounding drug use, heightened by a half-century of punitive policies, remains deeply entrenched. Aaron Hinton, the activist in Brownsville, said it may take decades to unwind the harm done to his neighborhood.

"It's one step forward, two steps back," Hinton said. "But I remain hopeful. Why? Because what else am I going to do?"

• drug policy
• war on drugs
• public health
• opioid epidemic

• Student Opportunities

About Hoover

Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nation’s preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance. 

• The Hoover Story
• Hoover Timeline & History
• Mission Statement
• Vision of the Institution Today
• Key Focus Areas
• About our Fellows
• Research Programs
• Annual Reports
• Hoover in DC
• Fellowship Opportunities
• Visit Hoover
• David and Joan Traitel Building & Rental Information
• Newsletter Subscriptions
• Connect With Us

Hoover scholars form the Institution’s core and create breakthrough ideas aligned with our mission and ideals. What sets Hoover apart from all other policy organizations is its status as a center of scholarly excellence, its locus as a forum of scholarly discussion of public policy, and its ability to bring the conclusions of this scholarship to a public audience.

• Peter Berkowitz
• Ross Levine
• Michael McFaul
• Timothy Garton Ash
• China's Global Sharp Power Project
• Economic Policy Group
• History Working Group
• Hoover Education Success Initiative
• National Security Task Force
• National Security, Technology & Law Working Group
• Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group
• Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group
• Renewing Indigenous Economies Project
• State & Local Governance
• Strengthening US-India Relations
• Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group
• Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region

Books by Hoover Fellows

Economics Working Papers

Hoover Education Success Initiative | The Papers

• Hoover Fellows Program
• National Fellows Program
• Student Fellowship Program
• Veteran Fellowship Program
• Congressional Fellowship Program
• Media Fellowship Program
• Silas Palmer Fellowship
• Economic Fellowship Program

Throughout our over one-hundred-year history, our work has directly led to policies that have produced greater freedom, democracy, and opportunity in the United States and the world.

• Determining America’s Role in the World
• Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
• Empowering State and Local Governance
• Revitalizing History
• Confronting and Competing with China
• Revitalizing American Institutions
• Reforming K-12 Education
• Understanding Public Opinion
• Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
• Energy & Environment
• Health Care
• Immigration
• International Affairs
• Key Countries / Regions
• Law & Policy
• Politics & Public Opinion
• Science & Technology
• Security & Defense
• State & Local
• Books by Fellows
• Published Works by Fellows
• Working Papers
• Congressional Testimony
• Hoover Press
• PERIODICALS
• The Caravan
• China's Global Sharp Power
• Economic Policy
• History Lab
• Hoover Education
• Global Policy & Strategy
• Middle East and the Islamic World
• Military History & Contemporary Conflict
• Renewing Indigenous Economies
• State and Local Governance
• Technology, Economics, and Governance

Hoover scholars offer analysis of current policy challenges and provide solutions on how America can advance freedom, peace, and prosperity.

• China Global Sharp Power Weekly Alert
• Email newsletters
• Hoover Daily Report
• Subscription to Email Alerts
• Periodicals
• California on Your Mind
• Defining Ideas
• Hoover Digest
• Video Series
• Uncommon Knowledge
• Battlegrounds
• GoodFellows
• Hoover Events
• Capital Conversations
• Hoover Book Club
• AUDIO PODCASTS
• Matters of Policy & Politics
• Economics, Applied
• Free Speech Unmuted
• Secrets of Statecraft
• Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century
• Libertarian
• Library & Archives

Support Hoover

Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoover’s mission and values.

What is MyHoover?

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at  Hoover.org . In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests.

Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover.

Log In to MyHoover

Forgot Password

Don't have an account? Sign up

Have questions? Contact us

• Support the Mission of the Hoover Institution
• Subscribe to the Hoover Daily Report
• Follow Hoover on Social Media

Make a Gift

Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society.

• About Hoover Institution
• Meet Our Fellows
• Focus Areas
• Research Teams
• Library & Archives

Library & archives

Events, news & press.

THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY: The War on Drugs

America has spent three decades and hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a national war on drugs. Has the war on drugs been an effective way of dealing with America's drug problem or does it cause more harm than good? How should we weigh the moral and utilitarian arguments for and against the war on drugs; in other words, do we need to intensify the war on drugs or is it time to declare a cease fire?

To view the full transcript of this episode, read below

Peter Robinson:  Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today,  The War on Drugs . Testimony before the United States' Senate by the Federal Council of Churches. I quote, "In dealing with gigantic social evils like disease or crime, individual liberty must be controlled in the interest of public safety." Later in the testimony and again I quote, "Traffic in these intoxicants is a social evil that must be destroyed. It means the degradation of families and needless inefficiency in industry."

No, the Federal Council of Churches was not testifying in favor of the war on drugs. It was testifying in favor of prohibition. Prohibition was enacted in 1920 with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It banned the sale of alcohol throughout the United States. What happened? Consumption of alcohol did decline but only temporarily. A black market in alcohol arose, giving rise to violent crime and colorful figures such as Al Capone. And as for the hoped for improvements in family life and industrial productivity, they never materialized. From hooch to hash.

Today's war on drugs has been going on for more than thirty years at a cost, every year, of billions of dollars. Our question, simply this, is the war on drugs any more effective than was the war on alcohol?

With us, two guests. Pete Wilson is the former governor of California. Governor Wilson is a staunch advocate of the war on drugs. Milton Friedman is a Nobel Prize winning economist. Dr. Friedman believes the war on drugs should be brought to an end.

Title: War, What Is It Good For?

Peter Robinson:  The  Economist  magazine this past August, I quote, "If you want to see money thrown at a problem to no good effect, you need look no further than America's war on drugs." The war on drugs and no good effect. Pete Wilson?

Pete Wilson:  Well I would disagree with that. The effort that is being made is to contain drug use, to prevent the kind of dysfunctional behavior, dangerous behavior, the neglect of children, all of the things that come from drug use of dangerous drugs, whether it is legal or illegal. And yes, it's expensive but I would argue that the alternative is far more costly.

Peter Robinson:  No good effect. Milton Freedman?

Milton Friedman:  Worse than no good effect. Many ha--harmful effects. We have been destroying other countries because we cannot enforce our own laws. The attempt to prohibit drugs has done far more harm than good.

Peter Robinson:  Pete Wilson, listen to a few statistics. First declared by Richard Nixon, the war on drugs has gone on for more than three decades. This year, 2001, the federal government will spend more than nineteen billion dollars on drug control policies with state and local governments kicking in another twenty-two billion. So we're talking about something that's gone on for thirty years and has a current year price tag of over forty billion dollars. The price of drugs, heroin and cocaine, lower today than it was fifteen years ago. After dropping somewhat during the 1980's, drug use now appears to be rising. I cite one study, the percentage of high school seniors who used an illegal drug within the past thirty days, peaked at forty percent in 1980, drops to fourteen percent in 1992, but has now risen to twenty-five percent. You still wish to maintain that this is a good investment for the nation?

Pete Wilson:  Yeah and I think the statistics that you are citing make the point that when we, in fact, actually engaged in a serious national effort, which didn't began in really until about 19--the mid 1980's. For a seven year period ending in '92, it had the effect of su--substantially containing the problem.

Peter Robinson:  Okay, what about these distinctions? When you have somebody who is serious about it, you can actually accomplish something?

Milton Friedman:  I don't think, first of all, the most important thing is you're not looking at the real cost of the attempt to (?) the drug. The costs are not dollars. The dollars are the least of it. There's a lot of money wasted.

Pete Wilson:  On that, we agree.

Milton Friedman:  The dollars are the least of it. What the real costs is what is done to our judicial system, what is done to our civil rights, what is done to other countries. I want Pete Wilson to tell me how he can justify destroying Colombia because we cannot enforce our laws. If we can enforce our laws, our laws prohibit the consumption of illegal drugs. If we can enforce those, it would be no problem about Colombia. But, as it is, we have caused th--tens of thousands of deaths in Colombia and other Latin American countries. I think that prohibition of drugs is the most immoral program--immoral program that the United States has ever engaged in. It's destroyed civil rights at home and it's destroyed nations…

Peter Robinson:  It's destroyed civil rights at home because of large numbers of Blacks and Hispanics and…

[Talking at same time]

Peter Robinson:  …what do you mean by that?

Milton Friedman:  No, no. It's destroyed civil rights at home for a very simple reason. If you take laws against murder or theft…

Peter Robinson:  Right.

Milton Friedman:  …there's a victim who has an interest in reporting it. So if somebody is--has a burglary, he calls the cops and the cops come and investigate. Now in drug use, in the--when you try to prevent somebody from ingesting something he wants to ingest, you have a willing buyer and a willing seller. There's a deal made.

Peter Robinson:  No one has an interest in reporting it.

Milton Friedman:  No one has an interest--and so the only way you can enforce it is through informers. That's the way in which the Soviet Union tried to enforce similar la--laws, laws which tried to prevent people from saying things they shouldn't say. Th--what's the difference, Pete, between s--p--saying to somebody, the government may tell you what you can take in your mouth but the government may not tell you what you may say out of your mouth? Where's the difference?

Pete Wilson:  The answer to your question is that they--they also enforce speed limits. I might like to drive a hundred and twenty miles an hour in a sixty-five mile zone but society tells me I can't. Why? What is their justification for curbing my free will? They are protecting others in society from the harm that I would do. When you say victims, drug use is hardly victimless whether it is legal or illegal.

Milton Friedman:  I agree with you on that. It's not…

Pete Wilson:  It's a tragedy. And it costs--where we do agree is that the dollars are the least of it. It is the incalculable human suffering, the waste of human potential and opportunity. It's the crack babies. It is…

Milton Friedman:  But all of those are made worse by the attempt to prohibit it. And look, take marijuana, for example, in thousands of years, there's not been a single death from overuse of marijuana. There's not evidence whatsoever that marijuana causes people to harm other people. And yet--and six--what is it, six states now…

Pete Wilson:  There's extraordinary evidence that PCP, methamphetamines and other dangerous drugs do.

Milton Friedman:  Yes, and those drugs…

Pete Wilson:  No question about it.

Milton Friedman:  …those drugs are--have been stimulated and--and their--their market expanded by the tempt--attempt to prohibit other drugs which has driven up the price of drugs that are less harmful.

Peter Robinson:  Can I--let me attempt…

Peter Robinson:  Next topic, is it useful to treat hard and soft drugs differently?

Title: The Harder They Come

Peter Robinson:  Pete, would you then be willing to decriminalize or at least entertain the decriminalization of marijuana and to draw a distinction between soft drugs, so to speak, of which marijuana would be the primary example and the harder drugs, heroin, co--cocaine, PCP's, methamphetamines. Would you be willing to entertain that?

Pete Wilson:  I don't think it's a good idea to legalize either one but, of course, I would make that distinction because law enforcement makes the distinction and indeed the law presently makes that distinction. But one of the popular mythologies is that there are people in prison for simple possession of marijuana. If you talk to judges, if you talk to prosecutors, talk to prosecutors in particular, they will tell you that the people in the California prison system, at least, who are there because of drug convictions, are not there because of simple possession. They had copped a plea. They had engaged in plea bargaining. They are there because they are dealers.

Milton Friedman:  Well many more there are dealers but, again, take the case of dealers. Because of prohibition, the dealer--the--the real dealers, have found it advantageous to hire teenagers because the juvenile laws punish them less s--less…

Peter Robinson:  Less severely.

Milton Friedman:  …less severely. When Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York, he put in especially stringent laws on drugs. But the juveniles were…

Peter Robinson:  Exempted.

Milton Friedman:  …exempted or--or on a lower level. And, as a result, the drug dealers st--switched to using juvenile. The attempt to prohibit drugs is one of the main reasons for the destruction of the ghettos in our cities. I'm sure you agree with that, Pete, that if you take--if you go into the ghettos, the prohibition of drugs is one of the main reasons why the prisoners in prison are disproportionately Black.

Pete Wilson:  Well I--I think this is a separate issue. I really do because what you're saying is an indictment that is leveled by civil libertarians with respect to the criminal justice system in general.

Milton Friedman:  Yes, it is.

Pete Wilson:  And the answer is, the criminal law ought to be enforced in a way that it's totally color blind. If it's not, it should be.

Milton Friedman:  But it's not because--it's not because the civil law is not col--color blind. It's because the ghettos are a good place to distribute drugs for obvious reasons. That's where you'll have a group that'll protect themselves, that'll provide protection. The customers are not Black for the most part. They come in from the outside, shop in the--in the inner cities.

Peter Robinson:  So you have a relatively lawless environment where the serious dealers can set up shop, employ gangs and kids and it becomes a distribution center for the White people from the suburbs.

Milton Friedman:  Absolutely.

Peter Robinson:  That's roughly--could we engage…

Peter Robinson:  A crucial question, would legalization cause drug consumption to go up?

Title: Up in Smoke

Peter Robinson:  James Q. Wilson, quote, "The central problem with legalizing drugs is that it will increase drug consumption under almost any reasonable guess as to what the legalization regime would look like." Wilson then goes on to survey the literature. He finds the predictions about how much under a regime of legalization the price of hard drugs would drop, range from a factor of three to a factor of twenty. I quote again, "Now take a powerfully addictive substance, one that not only operates on but modifies the brain and ask how many more people would use it if its cash price were only thirty percent or even five percent of its current price. The answer must be a lot."

Milton Friedman:  Well we have a good deal of evidence to counter Jim Wilson. In the first place, remember that drugs of all kinds were perfectly legal in the United States before 1914 or '13 rather. At that time…

Peter Robinson:  The original Coca-Cola actually contained a trace of cocaine…

Milton Friedman:  …it contained cocaine.

Milton Friedman:  You could buy it. There were--there--there--and the--the level of drug addiction, by the best of estimates, was roughly the same as it is now. We have the experience now in Holland where essentially marijuana has dec--is de--dereg--is legalized or effectively legalized. And the rate of use of marijuana among tee--teenagers, among you--youngsters in Holland is less than it is in the United States. There are all sorts of things that Jim Wilson leaves out of that account. But for--but for the moment…

Milton Friedman:  …let me suppose that there were--I'm not saying there would not be more users. There might be.

Peter Robinson:  But isn't that the central point?

Milton Friedman:  The people that might benefit most from legalization…

Pete Wilson:  Yes, it is the central point.

Milton Friedman:  …the people that would benefit most from legalization…

Milton Friedman:  …are the addicts because they would have--have an assurance of quality. They would not be in danger of their lives. They wouldn't have to become criminals in order to support their habit. It would be a wholly different world for them. Right now, you speak about crack babies. Right now, women who are--pregnant women are afraid--who--who are drug users, are afraid to get an--a prenatal care, afraid to get care because they'll be called criminals and turned over to the justice system.

Peter Robinson:  Let me go back to the other Wilson, James Q. Wilson. I quote Wilson, "John Stuart Mill, the father of modern libertarians," I go now to the moral point, "argued that society can only exert power over its members in order to prevent harm to others. I, James Q. Wilson, think the harm to others from drug illegalization will be greater than the harm and it is a great harm, it will be greater than the harm that now exists from keeping these drugs illegal." So it is a moral duty of the government to do what it can to contain the problem.

Milton Friedman:  Well I think it's a whole new speech, this argument, because the--the argument for drug prohibition has always been, in terms of the interest of the drug users themselves, to prevent people from becoming drug users.

Milton Friedman:  And so far as John Stuart Mills' dictum is concerned, he says government may never interfere for the benefit of the s--of the people who are using it or making the decision themselves. Only for the harm done to third parties.

Peter Robinson:  You may victimize yourself if you wish to and the govern--that is not the government's business.

Milton Friedman:  That's not the government's business. That's your business. You belong to yourself.

Pete Wilson:  He is concerned about the user. I am far more concerned about the users' parents, about the users' child, that addicted crack baby, about all the people who are indeed the victims of the use of dangerous drugs, whether it is legalized or whether it remains illegal. And Jim Wilson is right, that really is the issue. How do you restrict the number of people who will become users and thereby minimize the tragedy.

Peter Robinson:  What kind of arguments are Milton and Pete making, moral or utilitarian?

Title: Moral High Ground

Peter Robinson:  It sounded to me a moment ago as though we were slip-sliding from John Stuart Mill in the direction of Jeremy Bentham in the greatest good for the greater number. Is it, to both of you, merely an economic question which ought, in principle, to be open to investigation.

Pete Wilson:  Neither of us is it…

Peter Robinson:  That is to say…

Pete Wilson:  …primarily an economic question.

Peter Robinson:  …if we're simply trying to say, under one regime, we have more drug users and, under the other regime, we have fewer drug users, whichever regime produces the fewer drug users is what we'll go for. That is not the case?

Milton Friedman:  Of course not because you have to take account of the other harm which is done in the process of trying to prohibit the use of drugs. Look, alcohol kills a lot more people than--than drugs do.

Peter Robinson:  But you're nevertheless making util--utilitarian rather than a moral argument. Drug use is wrong and it is…

Milton Friedman:  I want to make…

Peter Robinson:  …the responsibility to the government to embody moral values. You have none of that. You're not interested in that?

Milton Friedman:  Yes I am.

Peter Robinson:  You are?

Milton Friedman:  I personally…

Milton Friedman:  …am opposed to drug prohibition on moral grounds. I think it's unethical. I think it's immoral. However…

Milton Friedman:  …lots of people don't agree with that and therefore, as an--as a person who is looking at the argument and trying to make the argument, I have gone and said, let's suppose I didn't have that view. What would my attitude be then? And I say, even then, as I look at the costs on the one hand and the benefits on the other, I say that the benefits for--the benefits from drug prohibition, even to those people who bel--believe it's moral, are far less in the costs, that this is a--it's--the drug prohibition has been a failure. We've had thirty years to try it. We've spent tens of hundreds of millions of people, we've sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of people in this country and in other countries…

Peter Robinson:  At the same…

Milton Friedman:  …and what have we achieved?

Peter Robinson:  …the same could be…

Milton Friedman:  Nothing.

Peter Robinson:  …said…

Pete Wilson:  No, that isn't true either…

Peter Robinson:  …in thirty or forty years, the same could be…

Pete Wilson:  …in fact, your evidence is very selective.

Peter Robinson:  …said of our approach toward the Soviet Union. We at least contained it. We had to live with it but we at least contained it. And that, in itself, is a moral and indeed a practical victory. Right?

Milton Friedman:  Not…

Pete Wilson:  Absolutely.

Milton Friedman:  …it's not clear that we've--we haven't contained it.

Pete Wilson:  But now, wait a minute.

Peter Robinson:  Okay. Pete.

Pete Wilson:  Let me give you some statistics that proves that we did when we were making the effort to do so. From '85 to '92, the estimated use of cocaine fell from 5.8 million Americans to 1.3. Now that's a significant figure. And I'm not going to drown you with other statistics because I think that one makes the point.

Peter Robinson:  Let me make you drug czar for a year. How would you prosecute the war on drugs if you could reform it in any way you chose to do, what ways would you reform it?

Pete Wilson:  I would do everything that could both reduce demand and reduce supply…

Peter Robinson:  Let me ask…

Pete Wilson:  …reduce availability and the last thing in the world that will reduce availability and reduce supply is to make it legal.

Peter Robinson:  Okay, federal money…

Pete Wilson:  There's no question. I mean, I would ask--I would ask Milton, what happened to the consumption of alcohol when there was a repeal of prohibition?

Milton Friedman:  First of all, when--when there was a repeal of prohibition…

Pete Wilson:  Did the end--did the use increase?

Milton Friedman:  Initially it did but then it started going down again. It was a temporary increase. It's not at all clear that prohibition reduced the consumption of alcohol. And what is clear is that alcohol it pro--prohibition destroyed civil rights. It's clear that it also led to adulteration, that it led to a higher level of deaths. If you look at the different question, if you look at deaths and the use of alcohol, they rose during…

Peter Robinson:  During prohibition.

Milton Friedman:  …during prohibition.

Pete Wilson:  But the paramount question is, if you are talking about a substance that produces tragic results…

Milton Friedman:  That's alcohol.

Pete Wilson:  It is also dangerous drugs far more than alcohol.

Milton Friedman:  Not at all.

Pete Wilson:  Well we…

Milton Friedman:  …alcohol…

Pete Wilson:  …we differ on that as well.

Milton Friedman:  Well look at the rate of use…

Pete Wilson:  I'm not here to…

Peter Robinson:  If you're going to have a war on drugs, should drug treatment be given a higher priority?

Title: Trip or Treat?

Peter Robinson:  Nineteen billion dollars slated in 2001 for the federal government--federal war on drugs. Another twenty-two billion among the states. It is certainly in the federal government and, by and large, true among the states, that the large share, the large majority of that money is devoted to law enforcement and interdiction efforts and only a relatively small minority of that money goes to drug treatment. Rand Corporation discovers in a study, treatment is seven times more cost effective than law enforcement, ten times more effective than drug interdiction and twenty-three times more cost effective than trying to cut drugs off at their source in Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America. Would you, as drug czar, shift resources away from interdiction and law enforcement to treatment?

Pete Wilson:  I would fully fund treatment but what I would point out to Rand and anyone else who wants to argue the point, that most of the people who undergo treatment do not do so voluntarily.

Peter Robinson:  That is true that--this...

Pete Wilson:  It is under coercion and if it is illegal, they are under the coercion of the courts. That's how most of them get there. If you make it legal, do you want to take on the ACLU when they say, how can you compel my client to go to court or go to drug rehabilitation…

Milton Friedman:  I'm not going to try to compel them. I would not…

Pete Wilson:  Well and--and you know what, the result is there would be far less in terms of a percentage and probably even in absolute numbers, people going into treatment, if you legalize it than if you maintain its illegality.

Peter Robinson:  Let's just grant that, as a political matter, for a number of reasons, a war on drugs, a major and sustained effort against drug use is just going to be with us. Let's just stipulate that it will. The question then would be, would you favor granting the government the coercive power to force people into treatment? Would you favor a massive shifting of resources from drug enforcement and drug interdiction to treatment?

Milton Friedman:  Yes I would.

Peter Robinson:  As a matter of principle, would you favor treating the war on drugs less as a matter of law enforcement…

Pete Wilson:  I would do both, Peter.

Peter Robinson:  …and more as…you would do more?

Pete Wilson:  I would do both because--and that's what happened during the period…

Milton Friedman:  That's what they've been saying all these years…

Pete Wilson:  …that we made significant progress on containment. Now we're never going to achieve perfection or anything close to it but what I will tell you is that it made an enormous difference. Fifty-eight or 5.8 million to 1.3 million in a seven year period is a very significant drop.

Peter Robinson:  Even that came at too high a cost in your view?

Milton Friedman:  Oh yes it did but moreover, it's very misleading. If you look over history at--at periods of dr--you have periods when drugs go up, periods when drugs go down. Without making things illegal, things can also be affected. Look at what's happened in--in smoking. Tobacco kills far more people than--than drugs do by--by a multiple. By information, by knowledge, you've had a strong reduction in--in--in smoking.

Peter Robinson:  So under the Milton Friedman…

Peter Robinson:  If drugs were legalized, would anti-drug campaigns still be effective?

Title: Smoke 'em If You Got 'em

Peter Robinson:  So under the Milton Friedman regime, that would not be a regime of moral laxity, it would be a regime of--under which drug use was legal but that would--you would--you, yourself would sign up to join the anti-drug temperate society. You would want large organizations, probably voluntary in your view, to be advertising against drugs, to be speaking against drugs…

Peter Robinson:  …you would want public pressure exerted on people to persuade them not to use drugs.

Milton Friedman:  I think drugs are terrible. I think people ought not to use drugs. I think it's not in their self-interest to use drugs. But if people insist on doing things in their self-interest, who am I to stop them? What I have to do is to stop them from doing harm to other people. That's the function of government as Pete and I agree. But I could do more--far more effectively, stop them from doing harm to other people in a legalized regime than I can in a--in a regime in which so-called illegal drugs are illeg--are--are--are illegal.

Pete Wilson:  Well I think history contradicts that. He mentioned the Dutch experience. The Dutch experience has not been a great success. If you look at the U.S. Department of Justice studies, the highest per capita crime rate to be found anywhere in Europe is in Amsterdam. If you look at the British experience, when they legalized it, allowing physicians to prescribe heroin, they experienced a thirty-fold increase in heroin use. And that wasn't all of the use either. You asked a question a moment ago, Milton answered it, I didn't. You said, is the basic point that we contain use? And the answer is, absolutely. When Mr. Sterling, the Director of the National Criminal Justice Foundation was making his remarks at the Hoover Symposium in this past year, I believe, his concluding remark was that there is no question that the increased availability of drugs makes it far more difficult for teenagers to resist the temptation. Well I can't think of anything that will more greatly increase the availability of drugs than legalizing it.

Milton Friedman:  What happens under the current circumstances is that teenage…

Peter Robinson:  I have the last word. It's television so…

Milton Friedman:  …teenagers tend to be attracted to drugs by--by the fact that they're illegal. First of all, there's propaganda against drugs which is so outrageous, which is so violent, violates what they know to be facts, when they're told that marijuana will eat out their brains, for example, that they come to distrust all such statements. And the, you know, the fact that it's illegal is an attraction, not a--a deterrent. In my opinion, there's no evidence whatsoever that legalizing drugs would cause any major increase in uses. I think you'll have periods when drug use goes up, periods when drug use goes down as you do with all other human phenomena. And I think that what you have to take into account is the enormous amount of harm that the attempt to prohibit drugs does to our system of laws, to our civil liberties, to human freedom and that we'll be more effective…

Peter Robinson:  Pete Wilson, you've got about twenty seconds…

Milton Friedman:  …in reducing the use of drugs…

Peter Robinson:  …for a closing statement.

Milton Friedman:  …by persuasion than by…

Pete Wilson:  Drug use, legal or illegal, is a tragedy if we're talking about hard, dangerous drugs. Drugs are not bad because they are illegal. We made them illegal because they produce tragic results. And the cost in dollars is the least of it. The human cost in calculable tragedy, the parents, the crack babies, that is the tragedy and John Stuart Mill said that society has a right to protect the third parties from harm by those who would exercise their own will doing something stupid.

Peter Robinson:  Pete Wilson, Milton Friedman, thank you very much.

Peter Robinson:  Prohibition lasted only a dozen years before the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. The war on drugs, the war on drugs has already lasted nearly three times as long. And as we just saw, the debate continues. I'm Peter Robinson. Thanks for joining us.

View the discussion thread.

Join the Hoover Institution’s community of supporters in ideas advancing freedom.

• Foreign Affairs
• CFR Education
• Newsletters

Climate Change

Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland December 5, 2023 Renewing America

• Defense & Security
• Diplomacy & International Institutions
• Energy & Environment

Human Rights

• Politics & Government
• Social Issues

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland January 31, 2022

• Europe & Eurasia
• Global Commons
• Middle East & North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa

How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer

Interactive by Olivia Angelino, Thomas J. Bollyky , Elle Ruggiero and Isabella Turilli February 1, 2023 Global Health Program

• Backgrounders
• Special Projects

United States

Reagan: His Life and Legend

Book by Max Boot September 10, 2024

• Centers & Programs
• Books & Reports
• Independent Task Force Program
• Fellowships

Oil and Petroleum Products

Academic Webinar: The Geopolitics of Oil

Webinar with Carolyn Kissane and Irina A. Faskianos April 12, 2023

• Students and Educators
• State & Local Officials
• Religion Leaders
• Local Journalists

NATO's Future: Enlarged and More European?

Virtual Event with Emma M. Ashford, Michael R. Carpenter, Camille Grand, Thomas Wright, Liana Fix and Charles A. Kupchan June 25, 2024 Europe Program

• Lectureship Series
• Webinars & Conference Calls
• Member Login

Human Rights and Duterte’s War on Drugs

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has led to thousands of extrajudicial killings, raising human rights concerns, says expert John Gershman in this interview.

Interview by Michelle Xu , Interviewer John Gershman , Interviewee

December 16, 2016 3:56 pm (EST)

Since becoming president of the Philippines in June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has launched a war on drugs that has resulted in the extrajudicial deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers and users across the country. The Philippine president sees drug dealing and addiction as “major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress,” says John Gershman, an expert on Philippine politics. The drug war is a cornerstone of Duterte’s domestic policy and represents the extension of policies he’d implemented earlier in his political career as the mayor of the city of Davao. In December 2016, the United States withheld poverty aid to the Philippines after declaring concern over Duterte’s war on drugs.

How did the Philippines’ war on drugs start?  

When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress. He promised a large-scale crackdown on dealers and addicts, similar to the crackdown that he engaged in when he was mayor of Davao, one of the Philippines’ largest cities on the southern island of Mindanao. When Duterte became president in June, he encouraged the public to “go ahead and kill” drug addicts. His rhetoric has been widely understood as an endorsement of extrajudicial killings, as it has created conditions for people to feel that it’s appropriate to kill drug users and dealers. What have followed seem to be vigilante attacks against alleged or suspected drug dealers and drug addicts. The police are engaged in large-scale sweeps. The Philippine National Police also revealed a list of high-level political officials and other influential people who were allegedly involved in the drug trade.

“When Rodrigo Duterte campaigned for president, he claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress.”

Philippines

Rodrigo Duterte

Drug Policy

The dominant drug in the Philippines is a variant of methamphetamine called shabu. According to a 2012 United Nations report , among all the countries in East Asia, the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine abuse. Estimates showed that about 2.2 percent of Filipinos between the ages of sixteen and sixty-four were using methamphetamines, and that methamphetamines and marijuana were the primary drugs of choice. In 2015, the national drug enforcement agency reported that one fifth of the barangays, the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, had evidence of drug use, drug trafficking, or drug manufacturing; in Manila, the capital, 92 percent of the barangays had yielded such evidence.

How would you describe Duterte’s leadership as the mayor of Davao?

After the collapse of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, there were high levels of crime in Davao and Duterte cracked down on crime associated with drugs and criminality more generally. There was early criticism of his time as mayor by Philippine and international human rights groups because of his de facto endorsement of extrajudicial killings, under the auspices of the “Davao Death Squad.”

Duterte was also successful at negotiating with the Philippine Communist Party. He was seen broadly as sympathetic to their concerns about poverty, inequality, and housing, and pursued a reasonably robust anti-poverty agenda while he was mayor. He was also interested in public health issues, launching the first legislation against public smoking in the Philippines, which he has claimed he will launch nationally.

What have been the outcomes of the drug war?

By early December , nearly 6,000 people had been killed: about 2,100 have died in police operations and the remainder in what are called “deaths under investigation,” which is shorthand for vigilante killings. There are also claims that half a million to seven hundred thousand people have surrendered themselves to the police. More than 40,000 people have been arrested.

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

Although human rights organizations and political leaders have spoken out against the crackdown, Duterte has been relatively successful at not having the legislature engaged in any serious oversight of or investigation into this war. Philippine Senator Leila de Lima, former chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and a former secretary of justice under the previous administration, had condemned the war on drugs and held hearings on human rights violations associated with these extrajudicial killings. However, in August, Duterte alleged that he had evidence of de Lima having an affair with her driver, who had been using drugs and collecting drug protection money when de Lima was the justice secretary. De Lima was later removed from her position chairing the investigative committee in a 16-4 vote by elected members of the Senate committee.

What is the public reaction to the drug war?

The war on drugs has received a high level of popular support from across the class spectrum in the Philippines. The most recent nationwide survey on presidential performance and trust ratings conducted from September 25 to October 1 by Pulse Asia Research showed that Duterte’s approval rating was around 86 percent. Even through some people are concerned about these deaths, they support him as a president for his position on other issues. For example, he has a relatively progressive economic agenda, with a focus on economic inequality.

Duterte is also supporting a range of anti-poverty programs and policies. The most recent World Bank quarterly report speaks positively about Duterte’s economic plans. The fact that he wants to work on issues of social inequality and economic inequality makes people not perceive the drug war as a war on the poor.

How is Duterte succeeding in carrying out this war on drugs?

The Philippine judicial system is very slow and perceived as corrupt, enabling Duterte to act proactively and address the issue of drugs in a non-constructive way with widespread violations of human rights. Moreover, in the face of a corrupt, elite-dominated political system and a slow, ineffective, and equally corrupt judicial system, people are willing to tolerate this politician who promised something and is now delivering.

“Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.”

There are no trials, so there is no evidence that the people being killed are in fact drug dealers or drug addicts. [This situation] shows the weakness of human rights institutions and discourse in the face of a popular and skilled populist leader. It is different from college students being arrested under the Marcos regime or activists being targeted under the first Aquino administration, when popular outcry was aroused. Drug dealers and drug addicts are a stigmatized group, and stigmatized groups always have difficulty gaining political support for the defense of their rights.

How has the United States reacted to the drug war and why is Duterte challenging U.S.-Philippines relations?

It’s never been a genuine partnership. It’s always been a relationship dominated by U.S. interests. Growing up in the 1960s, Duterte lived through a period when the United States firmly supported a regime that was even more brutal than this particular regime and was willing to not criticize that particular government. He noticed that the United States was willing to overlook human rights violations when these violations served their geopolitical interests. He was unhappy about the double standards. [Editor’s Note: The Obama administration has expressed concern over reports of extrajudicial killings and encouraged Manila to abide by its international human rights obligations.] For the first time, the United States is facing someone who is willing to challenge this historically imbalanced relationship. It is unclear what might happen to the relationship under the administration of Donald J. Trump, but initial indications are that it may not focus on human rights in the Philippines. President-Elect Trump has reportedly endorsed the Philippine president’s effort, allegedly saying that the country is going about the drug war "the right way," according to Duterte .

The interview has been edited and condensed.

Explore More on Philippines

President Marcos Jr. Meets With President Biden—But the U.S. Position in Southeast Asia is Increasingly Shaky

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick May 2, 2023 Asia Unbound

Marcos Jr. Tries to Escape Duterte’s Legacy, But Can He Be Trusted?

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick November 22, 2022 Asia Unbound

Why Democracy in Southeast Asia Will Worsen in 2023

Blog Post by Joshua Kurlantzick September 9, 2022 Asia Unbound

Top Stories on CFR

The IMF’s Latest External Sector Report Misses the Mark

Blog Post by Brad W. Setser August 26, 2024 Follow the Money

Democratic Republic of Congo

DRC-Rwanda Talks Underway, But Lasting Peace Remains Elusive

Blog Post by Michelle Gavin August 20, 2024 Africa in Transition

Women and Women's Rights

Women’s Power Index

Interactive by Linda Robinson and Noël James August 21, 2024 Women and Foreign Policy Program

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

30 Rhetoric, Race, and the War on Drugs

Blaise Gardineer

To my mother, for all of the time you spent and sacrifices you made for me. You will always be my greatest role model.

To my father, for teaching me what it takes to be a strong man in an unforgiving world. I use your advice every day.

To my sister, Veahna, for always being someone I can trust. I’ll always have your back.

To Aunt Net and Uncle Randy, for always taking care of me and becoming the grandparents I never got to meet.

To Aunt Patty, Aunt Lisa, Aunt Sherry, Aunt Suzette, and Aunt Stephanie, for bringing so much joy into my life and always supporting me. Go Deacs.

To all the friends I’ve made along the way. I won’t disappoint you all.

Keywords: Identity, Speech, Authority, Ideas, Values

Rhetoric shapes the world around us. Whether it be through advertisements that influence the things we buy, or articles that alter the opinions we hold, rhetoric has the power to change perception, and consequently, affect reality. Of course, the impact rhetoric can have on our lives isn’t limited to such mundane tasks like shopping and reading – its application and effects can extend to political discussion, policymaking, and action. Suddenly, the language we use evolves into a powerful tool that can have far-reaching real-life implications.

In American politics, arguably the most powerful voice is that of the President of the United States. Almost everything presidents do is widely documented, circulated, and critiqued, giving them a nearly unrivaled capacity to dictate narratives and influence policy initiatives with their statements (Yates and Whitford). When presidents utilize their rhetorical power, the results are widespread, and can lead to varying outcomes for different citizens across the country. In demonstrating these assertions, there are few better cases to examine than the American war on drugs.

At the beginning of the war on drugs, President Richard Nixon made calculated rhetorical choices in framing the issue to the American people, and his rhetorical choices would go on to shape the laws created to combat drug use in the United States in both his own administration and in his successor’s. Critical race theorists, those who study the intersection of race, law, and societal outcomes, have found that these laws resulted in disproportionately negative effects on black communities across the country, and have continued to impact generations of African Americans. In this chapter, I hope to draw connections between the rhetoric used in marketing the war on drugs and its outcomes.

A key characteristic of Nixon’s anti-drug agenda was his framing of the initiative as a war. Militaristic rhetoric has been used to market the logic behind a host of different policy initiatives to the American people on both foreign and domestic issues; Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty being one example, and the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union being another. The attractiveness of war as a metaphor for presidents to market government action stems from its ability to evoke distinct behaviors and emotions, or pathos, in the American people.

Wars tend to evoke crisis attitudes in citizens. Crisis situations, when speaking rhetorically, frame a scenario as one that requires urgent, decisive action (Zarefsky). In addition, wars typically provide a common enemy for people to unite under the shared goal of defeating; the concept of poverty was the enemy of Johnson’s rhetorical policy war, and containing the threat of communism fueled the Cold War. These reactions allow for the rapid consolidation of public support for action, and demonstrate how rhetoric can enable presidents to extend their role as commander-in-chief from a military context to a legislative one in political advocacy.

When looking at prior examples of war being central to the ethos of policy marketing, the “enemy” that citizens were asked to unite against was an abstract concept. In Lyndon B. Johnson’s case, this enemy was poverty, and it was “defeated” by the passage of extensive civil rights reforms and social programs. With the Cold War, America was ultimately crowned the victor with the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, with the war on drugs, the rhetorical framing of the issue saw did not chastise some ideological enemy. Instead, it constituted the redefinition of American citizens as “enemies” (Stuart), which combined with the feelings evoked by war typically, created a perceived necessity for aggressive response tactics.

This move toward interpopulation warfare began with President Nixon’s rhetorical choices, and would continue to influence the policies of his successors in combatting the production, circulation, and usage of drugs in the United States. Policies like the Drug Free Schools Act of 1986, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, established relationships between schools and juvenile justice systems – relationships underpinned by the enforcement of zero-tolerance drug use policies that carried harsh repercussions. The Safe Schools Act of 1994 further normalized the relationship between schools and law enforcement by creating funding for “school resource officers,” which were usually local police officers as opposed to trained faculty, that would be stationed at schools to enforce the rules. The combination of severe punishment for drug-related crimes and an increase in law enforcement presence in schools astronomically increased student arrests on school properties, creating the “school-to-prison pipeline” that excessively impacted black Americans (Fornili).

The militaristic ethos behind marketing the war on drugs implicitly influenced the enforcement of its policies, resulting in an offensive shift in how policing takes place in the United States. Normally, law enforcement officials stay on stand-by, waiting to be summoned in order to resolve conflicts. However, the enforcement of war on drugs policies saw police officers placed in the “front lines” with their injection into schools, and lethally armed with cruel mandatory minimum penalties. Ultimately, the pursuit of a domestic “enemy” would lead to the mass incarceration of African Americans, a product of disproportionate levels of policing in black communities and the unforgiving nature of the punishments associated with drug-related offenses. This mass incarceration would have lasting impacts on generations of black people, and these outcomes have been examined under the lens of critical race theory.

A concept asserted by critical race theory (CRT) is social construction, which holds that the dominant race in a society has the propensity to invent ideas about other groups in order to achieve a desired result. The concept of social construction goes hand-in-hand with differential racialization, another CRT concept holding that behaviors such as drug use and criminal activity are more common among people of color than white people (Delgado and Stefancic). The rhetoric used in marketing the war on drugs constitutes social construction, as impoverished urban communities that were typically made up of African Americans were painted as obstacles in stopping the spread of drugs in the U.S. The societal outcome of this social construction was the normalization of the ideas behind differential racialization.

As the belief that black people consume drugs more often than white people gained popularity, it began to influence the levels of policing on black people across the country. While there is no empirical evidence to show that African Americans use drugs at a higher rate than white Americans, there is evidence showing that blacks account for a higher percentage of drug-related arrests compared to whites, make up almost half of all drug-related convictions and state prison sentences, and are twice as likely as whites to be arrested during a traffic stop (Thompson and Bobo). These significant disparities in policing practices between blacks and whites demonstrates a relationship between race and the enforcement of drug-related laws, as police would often use race as a factor when gauging whether or not to purse action against an individual (Fornili). As black people began to funnel into the prison system, they would forfeit their right to vote, as well as access to educational and professional opportunities. These outcomes are crucial in understanding the generational impact of the war on drugs, and its rhetoric, on African Americans.

It is my hope that throughout this chapter, I have demonstrated the expansive power of rhetoric in shaping reality by examining the war on drugs. The use of war as a metaphor in promoting anti-drug policy allowed for the rapid consolidation of public support for action, while simultaneously redefining some Americans as enemies. This resulted in harsh enforcement policies being enacted that would disproportionately impact African American communities compared to other groups. Further, the generational effects on African American communities in America can be better understood through the lens of critical race theory, as it demonstrates how race and law can interact to create long-term societal consequences. All of these outcomes are a result of rhetorical choices, exemplifying their importance.

Works Cited

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory (Third Edition): An Introduction . NYU Press, 2017.

Fornili, Katherine Smith. “Racialized Mass Incarceration and the War on Drugs: A Critical Race Theory Appraisal.” Journal of Addictions Nursing , vol. 29, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 65–72. journals.lww.com , doi:10.1097/JAN.0000000000000215.

Stuart, Susan. “War as Metaphor and the Rule of Law in Crisis: The Lessons We Should Have Learned from the War on Drugs.” Southern Illinois University Law Journal , vol. 36, no. 1, 2012 2011, pp. 1–44.

Thompson, Victor R., and Lawrence D. Bobo. “Thinking about Crime: Race and Lay Accounts of Lawbreaking Behavior.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , vol. 634, no. 1, SAGE Publications Inc, Mar. 2011, pp. 16–38. SAGE Journals , doi:10.1177/0002716210387057.

Yates, Jeff, and Andrew B. Whitford. “Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies , vol. 6, no. 4, 2009, pp. 874–98. Wiley Online Library , doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01163.x.

Zarefsky, David. “Presidential Rhetoric and the Power of Definition.” Presidential Studies Quarterly , vol. 34, no. 3, 2004, pp. 607–19. Wiley Online Library , doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00214.x.

Rhetoric in Everyday Life Copyright © 2021 by Blaise Gardineer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The war on drugs, explained

by German Lopez

The US has been fighting a global war on drugs for decades. But as prison populations and financial costs increase and drug-related violence around the world continues, lawmakers and experts are reconsidering if the drug war’s potential benefits are really worth its many drawbacks.

What is the war on drugs?

In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon formally launched the war on drugs to eradicate illicit drug use in the US. “If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely in time destroy us,” Nixon told Congress in 1971. “I am not prepared to accept this alternative.”

Over the next couple decades, particularly under the Reagan administration, what followed was the escalation of global military and police efforts against drugs. But in that process, the drug war led to unintended consequences that have proliferated violence around the world and contributed to mass incarceration in the US, even if it has made drugs less accessible and reduced potential levels of drug abuse.

Nixon inaugurated the war on drugs at a time when America was in hysterics over widespread drug use. Drug use had become more public and prevalent during the 1960s due in part to the counterculture movement, and many Americans felt that drug use had become a serious threat to the country and its moral standing.

Over the past four decades, the US has committed more than $1 trillion to the war on drugs. But the crackdown has in some ways failed to produce the desired results: Drug use remains a very serious problem in the US, even though the drug war has made these substances less accessible. The drug war also led to several — some unintended — negative consequences, including a big strain on America’s criminal justice system and the proliferation of drug-related violence around the world.

While Nixon began the modern war on drugs, America has a long history of trying to control the use of certain drugs. Laws passed in the early 20th century attempted to restrict drug production and sales. Some of this history is racially tinged , and, perhaps as a result, the war on drugs has long hit minority communities the hardest.

In response to the failures and unintended consequences, many drug policy experts and historians have called for reforms: a larger focus on rehabilitation , the decriminalization of currently illicit substances, and even the legalization of all drugs.

The question with these policies, as with the drug war more broadly, is whether the risks and costs are worth the benefits. Drug policy is often described as choosing between a bunch of bad or mediocre options, rather than finding the perfect solution. In the case of the war on drugs, the question is whether the very real drawbacks of prohibition — more racially skewed arrests, drug-related violence around the world, and financial costs — are worth the potential gains from outlawing and hopefully depressing drug abuse in the US.

Is the war on drugs succeeding?

The goal of the war on drugs is to reduce drug use. The specific aim is to destroy and inhibit the international drug trade — making drugs scarcer and costlier, and therefore making drug habits in the US unaffordable. And although some of the data shows drugs getting cheaper, drug policy experts generally believe that the drug war is nonetheless preventing some drug abuse by making the substances less accessible.

The prices of most drugs, as tracked by the Office of National Drug Control Policy , have plummeted. Between 1981 and 2007, the median bulk price of heroin is down by roughly 93 percent, and the median bulk price of powder cocaine is down by about 87 percent. Between 1986 and 2007, the median bulk price of crack cocaine fell by around 54 percent. The prices of meth and marijuana, meanwhile, have remained largely stable since the 1980s.

Much of this is explained by what’s known as the balloon effect : Cracking down on drugs in one area doesn’t necessarily reduce the overall supply of drugs. Instead, drug production and trafficking shift elsewhere, because the drug trade is so lucrative that someone will always want to take it up — particularly in countries where the drug trade might be one of the only economic opportunities and governments won’t be strong enough to suppress the drug trade.

The balloon effect has been documented in multiple instances, including Peru and Bolivia to Colombia in the 1990s, the Netherlands Antilles to West Africa in the early 2000s, and Colombia and Mexico to El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in the 2000s and 2010s.

Sometimes the drug war has failed to push down production altogether, like in Afghanistan. The US spent $7.6 billion between 2002 and 2014 to crack down on opium in Afghanistan, where a bulk of the world’s supply for heroin comes from. Despite the efforts, Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop cultivation reached record levels in 2013.

On the demand side, illicit drug use has dramatically fluctuated since the drug war began. The Monitoring the Future survey , which tracks illicit drug use among high school students, offers a useful proxy: In 1975, four years after President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, 30.7 percent of high school seniors reportedly used drugs in the previous month. In 1992, the rate was 14.4 percent. In 2013, it was back up to 25.5 percent.

Still, prohibition does likely make drugs less accessible than they would be if they were legal. A 2014 study by Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested that prohibition multiplies the price of hard drugs like cocaine by as much as 10 times. And illicit drugs obviously aren’t available through easy means — one can’t just walk into a CVS and buy heroin. So the drug war is likely stopping some drug use: Caulkins estimates that legalization could lead hard drug abuse to triple, although he told me it could go much higher.

But there’s also evidence that the drug war is too punitive: A 2014 study from Peter Reuter at the University of Maryland and Harold Pollack at the University of Chicago found there’s no good evidence that tougher punishments or harsher supply-elimination efforts do a better job of pushing down access to drugs and substance abuse than lighter penalties. So increasing the severity of the punishment doesn’t do much, if anything, to slow the flow of drugs.

Instead, most of the reduction in accessibility from the drug war appears to be a result of the simple fact that drugs are illegal, which by itself makes drugs more expensive and less accessible by eliminating avenues toward mass production and distribution.

The question is whether the possible reduction of potential drug use is worth the drawbacks that come in other areas, including a strained criminal justice system and the global proliferation of violence fueled by illegal drug markets. If the drug war has failed to significantly reduce drug use, production, and trafficking, then perhaps it’s not worth these costs, and a new approach is preferable.

How does the US decide which drugs are regulated or banned?

The US uses what’s called the drug scheduling system . Under the Controlled Substances Act , there are five categories of controlled substances known as schedules, which weigh a drug’s medical value and abuse potential.

Medical value is typically evaluated through scientific research, particularly large-scale clinical trials similar to those used by the Food and Drug Administration for pharmaceuticals. Potential for abuse isn’t clearly defined by the Controlled Substances Act, but for the federal government, abuse is when individuals take a substance on their own initiative, leading to personal health hazards or dangers to society as a whole.

Under this system, Schedule 1 drugs are considered to have no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Schedule 2 drugs have high potential for abuse but some medical value. As the rank goes down to Schedule 5, a drug’s potential for abuse generally decreases.

It may be helpful to think of the scheduling system as made up of two distinct groups: nonmedical and medical. The nonmedical group is the Schedule 1 drugs, which are considered to have no medical value and high potential for abuse. The medical group is the Schedule 2 to 5 drugs, which have some medical value and are numerically ranked based on abuse potential (from high to low).

Marijuana and heroin are Schedule 1 drugs, so the federal government says they have no medical value and a high potential for abuse. Cocaine, meth, and opioid painkillers are Schedule 2 drugs, so they’re considered to have some medical value and high potential for abuse. Steroids and testosterone products are Schedule 3, Xanax and Valium are Schedule 4, and cough preparations with limited amounts of codeine are Schedule 5. Congress specifically exempted alcohol and tobacco from the schedules in 1970.

Although these schedules help shape criminal penalties for illicit drug possession and sales, they’re not always the final word. Congress, for instance, massively increased penalties against crack cocaine in 1986 in response to concerns about a crack epidemic and its potential link to crime. And state governments can set up their own criminal penalties and schedules for drugs as well.

Other countries, like the UK and Australia , use similar systems to the US, although their specific rankings for some drugs differ.

How does the US enforce the war on drugs?

The US fights the war on drugs both domestically and overseas.

On the domestic front, the federal government supplies local and state police departments with funds, legal flexibility, and special equipment to crack down on illicit drugs. Local and state police then use this funding to go after drug dealing organizations.

“[Federal] assistance helped us take out major drug organizations, and we took out a number of them in Baltimore,” said Neill Franklin, a retired police major and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition , which opposes the war on drugs. “But to do that, we took out the low-hanging fruit to work up the chain to find who was at the top of the pyramid. It started with low-level drug dealers, working our way up to midlevel management, all the way up to the kingpins.”

Some of the funding, particularly from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program , encourages local and state police to participate in anti-drug operations. If police don’t use the money to go after illicit substances, they risk losing it — providing a financial incentive for cops to continue the war on drugs.

Although the focus is on criminal groups, casual users still get caught in the criminal justice system. Between 1999 and 2007, Human Rights Watch found at least 80 percent of drug-related arrests were for possession, not sales.

It seems, however, that arrests for possession don’t typically turn into convictions and prison time. According to federal statistics , only 5.3 percent of drug offenders in federal prisons and 27.9 percent of drug offenders in state prisons in 2004 were in for drug possession. The overwhelming majority were in for trafficking, and a small few were in for an unspecified “other” category.

Mexican officials incinerate 130 tons of seized marijuana.

Internationally, the US regularly aids other countries in their efforts to crack down on drugs. For example, the US in the 2000s provided military aid and training to Colombia — in what’s known as Plan Colombia — to help the Latin American country go after criminal organizations and paramilitaries funded through drug trafficking.

Federal officials argue that helping countries like Colombia attacks the source of illicit drugs, since such substances are often produced in Latin America and shipped north to the US. But the international efforts have consistently displaced , not eliminated, drug trafficking — and the violence that comes with it — to other countries.

Given the struggles of the war on drugs to meet its goals , federal and state officials have begun moving away from harsh enforcement tactics and tough-on-crime stances. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy now advocates for a bigger focus on rehabilitation and less on law enforcement. Even some conservatives, like former Texas Governor Rick Perry , have embraced drug courts , which place drug offenders into rehabilitation programs instead of jail or prison.

The idea behind these reforms is to find a better balance between locking up more people for drug trafficking while moving genuinely problematic drug users to rehabilitation and treatment services that could help them. “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” Michael Botticelli, US drug czar, said , “and we really need to focus our attention on proven public health strategies to make a significant difference as it relates to drug use and consequences to that in the United States.”

How has the war on drugs changed the US criminal justice system?

The escalation of the criminal justice system’s reach over the past few decades, ranging from more incarceration to seizures of private property and militarization, can be traced back to the war on drugs.

After the US stepped up the drug war throughout the 1970s and '80s, harsher sentences for drug offenses played a role in turning the country into the world's leader in incarceration . (But drug offenders still make up a small part of the prison population: About 54 percent of people in state prisons — which house more than 86 percent of the US prison population — were violent offenders in 2012, and 16 percent were drug offenders, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics .)

Still, mass incarceration has massively strained the criminal justice system and led to a lot of overcrowding in US prisons — to the point that some states, such as California , have rolled back penalties for nonviolent drug users and sellers with the explicit goal of reducing their incarcerated population.

In terms of police powers, civil asset forfeitures have been justified as a way to go after drug dealing organizations. These forfeitures allow law enforcement agencies to take the organizations’ assets — cash in particular — and then use the gains to fund more anti-drug operations. The idea is to turn drug dealers’ ill-gotten gains against them.

But there have been many documented cases in which police abused civil asset forfeiture, including instances in which police took people’s cars and cash simply because they suspected — but couldn’t prove — that there was some sort of illegal activity going on. In these cases, it’s actually up to people whose private property was taken to prove that they weren’t doing anything illegal — instead of traditional legal standards in which police have to prove wrongdoing or reasonable suspicion of it before they act.

Similarly, the federal government helped militarize local and state police departments in an attempt to better equip them in the fight against drugs. The Pentagon’s 1033 program , which gives surplus military-grade equipment to police, was created in the 1990s as part of President George HW Bush’s escalation of the war on drugs. The deployment of SWAT teams, as reported by the ACLU, also increased during the past few decades, and 62 percent of SWAT raids in 2011 and 2012 were for drug searches.

Various groups have complained that these increases in police power are often abused and misused. The ACLU, for instance, argues that civil asset forfeitures threaten Americans’ civil liberties and property rights, because police can often seize assets without even filing charges. Such seizures also might encourage police to focus on drug crimes, since a raid can result in actual cash that goes back to the police department, while a violent crime conviction likely would not. The libertarian Cato Institute has also criticized the war on drugs for decades, because anti-drug efforts gave cover to a huge expansion of law enforcement’s surveillance capabilities, including wiretaps and US mail searches.

The militarization of police became a particular sticking point during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police shooting of Michael Brown . After heavily armed police responded to largely peaceful protesters with armored vehicle that resemble tanks, tear gas, and sound cannons, law enforcement experts and journalists criticized the tactics.

Since the beginning of the war on drugs, the general trend has been to massively grow police powers and expand the criminal justice system as a means of combating drug use. But as the drug war struggles to halt drug use and trafficking, the heavy-handed policies — which many describe as draconian — have been called into question. If the war on drugs isn’t meeting its goals, critics say these expansions of the criminal justice system aren’t worth the financial strain and costs to liberty in the US.

How has the drug war contributed to violence around the world?

The war on drugs has created a black market for illicit drugs that criminal organizations around the world can rely on for revenue that payrolls other, more violent activities. This market supplies so much revenue that drug trafficking organizations can actually rival developing countries’ weak government institutions.

In Mexico, for example, drug cartels have leveraged their profits from the drug trade to violently maintain their stranglehold over the market despite the government’s war on drugs. As a result, public decapitations have become a particularly prominent tactic of ruthless drug cartels. As many as 80,000 people have died in the war. Tens of thousands of people have gone missing since 2007, including 43 students who vanished in 2014 in a widely publicized case.

But even if Mexico were to actually defeat drug cartels, this potentially wouldn’t reduce drug war violence on a global scale. Instead, drug production and trafficking, and the violence that comes with both, would likely shift elsewhere, because the drug trade is so lucrative that someone will always want to take it up — particularly in countries where the drug trade might be one of the only economic opportunities and governments won’t be strong enough to suppress the drug trade.

In 2014, for instance, the drug war significantly contributed to the child migrant crisis. After some drug trafficking was pushed out of Mexico, gangs and drug cartels stepped up their operations in Central America’s Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. These countries, with their weak criminal justice and law enforcement systems, didn’t seem to have the capacity to deal with the influx of violence and crime.

The war on drugs “drove a lot of the activities to Central America, a region that has extremely weakened systems,” Adriana Beltran of the Washington Office on Latin America explained . “Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a strong commitment to building the criminal justice system and the police.”

As a result, children fled their countries by the thousands in a major humanitarian crisis . Many of these children ended up in the US, where the refugee system simply doesn’t have the capacity to handle the rush of child migrants.

Although the child migrant crisis is fairly unique in its specific circumstances and effects, the series of events — a government cracks down on drugs, trafficking moves to another country, and the drug trade brings violence and crime — is pretty typical in the history of the war on drugs. In the past couple of decades it happened in Colombia , Mexico , Venezuela , and Ecuador after successful anti-drug crackdowns in other Latin American countries.

The Wall Street Journal explained :

Ironically, the shift is partly a by-product of a drug-war success story, Plan Colombia. In a little over a decade, the U.S. spent nearly $8 billion to back Colombia’s efforts to eradicate coca fields, arrest traffickers and battle drug-funded guerrilla armies such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Colombian cocaine production declined, the murder rate plunged and the FARC is on the run. But traffickers adjusted. Cartels moved south across the Ecuadorean border to set up new storage facilities and pioneer new smuggling routes from Ecuador’s Pacific coast. Colombia’s neighbor to the east, Venezuela, is now the departure point for half of the cocaine going to Europe by sea.

As a 2012 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime explained, "one country’s success became the problem of others."

This global proliferation of violence is one of the most prominent costs of the drug war. When evaluating whether the war on drugs has been successful, experts and historians weigh this cost, along with the rise of incarceration in the US, against the benefits, such as potentially depressed drug use, to gauge whether anti-drug efforts have been worth it.

How much does the war on drugs cost?

Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance . As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts.

The spending estimates don’t account for the loss of potential taxes on currently illegal substances. According to a 2010 paper from the libertarian Cato Institute, taxing and regulating illicit drugs similarly to tobacco and alcohol could raise $46.7 billion in tax revenue each year.

These annual costs — the spending, the lost potential taxes — add up to nearly 2 percent of state and federal budgets, which totaled an estimated $6.1 trillion in 2013. That’s not a huge amount of money, but it may not be worth the cost if the war on drugs is leading to drug-related violence around the world and isn’t significantly reducing drug abuse .

Is the war on drugs racist?

In the US, the war on drugs mostly impacts minority, particularly black, communities. This disproportionate effect is why critics often call the war on drugs racist .

Although black communities aren’t more likely to use or sell drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses.

When black defendants are convicted for drug crimes, they face longer prison sentences as well. Drug sentences for black men were 13.1 percent longer than drug sentences for white men between 2007 and 2009, according to a 2012 report from the US Sentencing Commission.

The Sentencing Project explained the differences in a February 2015 report: “Myriad criminal justice policies that appear to be race-neutral collide with broader socioeconomic patterns to create a disparate racial impact… Socioeconomic inequality does lead people of color to disproportionately use and sell drugs outdoors, where they are more readily apprehended by police.”

One example: Trafficking crack cocaine, one of the few illicit drugs that’s more popular among black Americans, carries the harshest punishment. The threshold for a five-year mandatory minimum sentence of crack is 28 grams. In comparison, the threshold for powder cocaine, which is more popular among white than black Americans but pharmacoligically similar to crack, is 500 grams.

As for the broader racial disparities, federal programs that encourage local and state police departments to crack down on drugs may create perverse incentives to go after minority communities. Some federal grants , for instance, previously required police to make more drug arrests in order to obtain more funding for anti-drug efforts. Neill Franklin, a retired police major from Maryland and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition , said minority communities are “the low-hanging fruit” for police departments because they tend to sell in open-air markets, such as public street corners, and have less political and financial power than white Americans.

In Chicago, for instance, an analysis by Project Know , a drug addiction resource center, found enforcement of anti-drug laws is concentrated in poor neighborhoods, which tend to have more crime but are predominantly black :

“Doing these evening and afternoon sweeps meant 20 to 30 arrests, and now you have some great numbers for your grant application,” Franklin said. “In that process, we also ended up seizing a lot of money and a lot of property. That’s another cash cow.”

The disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates have clearly detrimental effects on minority communities. A 2014 study published in the journal Sociological Science found boys with imprisoned fathers are much less likely to possess the behavioral skills needed to succeed in school by the age of 5, starting them on a vicious path known as the school-to-prison pipeline .

As the drug war continues, these racial disparities have become one of the major points of criticism against it. It’s not just whether the war on drugs has led to the widespread, costly incarceration of millions of Americans, but whether incarceration has created “the new Jim Crow” — a reference to policies, such as segregation and voting restrictions, that subjugated black communities in America.

What are the roots of the war on drugs?

Beyond the goal of curtailing drug use , the motivations behind the US war on drugs have been rooted in historical fears of immigrants and minority groups.

The US began regulating and restricting drugs during the first half of the 20th century, particularly through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 , the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 , and the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 . During this period, racial and ethnic tensions were particularly high across the country — not just toward African Americans, but toward Mexican and Chinese immigrants as well.

As the New York Times explained , the federal prohibition of marijuana came during a period of national hysteria about the effect of the drug on Mexican immigrants and black communities. Concerns about a new, exotic drug, coupled with feelings of xenophobia and racism that were all too common in the 1930s, drove law enforcement, the broader public, and eventually legislators to demand the drug’s prohibition. “Police in Texas border towns demonized the plant in racial terms as the drug of ‘immoral’ populations who were promptly labeled ‘fiends,’” wrote the Times’s Brent Staples.

These beliefs extended to practically all forms of drug prohibition. According to historian Peter Knight , opium largely came over to America with Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. Americans, already skeptical of the drug, quickly latched on to xenophobic beliefs that opium somehow made Chinese immigrants dangerous. “Stories of Chinese immigrants who lured white females into prostitution, along with the media depictions of the Chinese as depraved and unclean, bolstered the enactment of anti-opium laws in eleven states between 1877 and 1900,” Knight wrote .

Cocaine was similarly attached in fear to black communities, neuroscientist Carl Hart wrote for the Nation. The belief was so widespread that the New York Times even felt comfortable writing headlines in 1914 that claimed “Negro cocaine ‘fiends’ are a new southern menace.“ The author of the Times piece — a physician — wrote, ”[The cocaine user] imagines that he hears people taunting and abusing him, and this often incites homicidal attacks upon innocent and unsuspecting victims.” He later added, “Many of the wholesale killings in the South may be cited as indicating that accuracy in shooting is not interfered with — is, indeed, probably improved — by cocaine. … I believe the record of the ‘cocaine n----r’ near Asheville who dropped five men dead in their tracks using only one cartridge for each, offers evidence that is sufficiently convincing.”

Most recently, these fears of drugs and the connection to minorities came up during what law enforcement officials characterized as a crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and ‘90s. Lawmakers, judges, and police in particular linked crack to violence in minority communities. The connection was part of the rationale for making it 100 times easier to get a mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine over powder cocaine, even though the two drugs are pharmacologically identical. As a result, minority groups have received considerably harsher prison sentences for illegal drugs. (In 2010, the ratio between crack’s sentence and cocaine’s was reduced from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1.)

Hart explained , after noting the New York Times’s coverage in particular: “Over the [late 1980s], a barrage of similar articles connected crack and its associated problems with black people. Entire specialty police units were deployed to ‘troubled neighborhoods,’ making excessive arrests and subjecting the targeted communities to dehumanizing treatment. Along the way, complex economic and social forces were reduced to criminal justice problems; resources were directed toward law enforcement rather than neighborhoods’ real needs, such as job creation.”

None of this means the war on drugs is solely driven by fears of immigrants and minorities, and many people are genuinely concerned about drugs’ effects on individuals and society. But when it comes to the war on drugs, the historical accounts suggest the harshest crackdowns often follow hysteria linked to minority drug use — making the racial disparities in the drug war seem like a natural consequence of anti-drug efforts’ roots.

What about the band The War on Drugs?

They’re pretty great, though they don’t have much to do with the actual war on drugs.

But since you mentioned them, take a break and listen to a couple songs from their latest album, Lost in the Dream .

The War on Drugs, “Red Eye”:

The War on Drugs, “Under the Pressure”:

Bonus from their 2011 album, Slave Ambient : The War on Drugs, “Best Night”:

What are the most dangerous drugs?

This is actually a fairly controversial question among drug policy experts. Although some researchers have tried to rank drugs by their harms, some experts argue the rankings are often far more misleading than useful.

In a report published in The Lancet , a group of researchers evaluated the harms of drug use in the UK, considering factors like deadliness, chance of developing dependence, behavioral changes such as increased risk of violence, and losses in economic productivity. Alcohol, heroin, and crack cocaine topped the chart.

There are at least two huge caveats to this report. First, it doesn’t entirely control for the availability of these drugs, so it’s likely heroin and crack cocaine in particular would be ranked higher if they were as readily available as alcohol. Second, the scores were intended for British society, so the specific scores may differ slightly for the US. David Nutt, who led the analysis, suggested meth’s harm score could be much higher in the US, since it’s more widely used in America.

But drug policy experts argue the study and ranking miss some of the nuance behind the harm of certain drugs.

Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, gave the example of an alien race visiting Earth and asking which land animal is the biggest. If the question is about weight, the African elephant is the biggest land animal. But if it’s about height, the giraffe is the biggest. And if the question is about length, the reticulated python is the biggest.

“You can always create some composite, but composites are fraught with problems,” Caulkins said. “I think it’s more misleading than useful.”

The blunt measures of drug harms present similar issues. Alcohol, tobacco, and prescription painkillers are likely deadlier than other drugs because they are legal, so comparing their aggregate effects to illegal drugs is difficult. Some drugs are very harmful to individuals, but they’re so rarely used that they may not be a major public health threat. A few drugs are enormously dangerous in the short term but not so much the long term (heroin), or vice versa (tobacco). And looking at deaths or other harms caused by certain drugs doesn’t always account for substances, such as prescription medications, that are often mixed with others, making them more deadly or harmful than they would be alone.

Given the diversity of drugs and their effects, many experts argue that trying to establish a ranking of the most dangerous drugs is a futile, misleading exercise. Instead of trying to base policy on a ranking, experts say, lawmakers should build individual policies that try to minimize each drug’s specific set of risks and harms.

Why are alcohol and tobacco exempted from the war on drugs?

Tobacco and alcohol are explicitly exempted from drug scheduling, despite their detrimental impacts on individual health and society as a whole, due to economic and cultural reasons.

Tobacco and alcohol have been acceptable drugs in US culture for hundreds of years, and they are still the most widely used drugs , along with caffeine, in the nation. Trying to stop Americans — through the threat of legal force — from using these drugs would likely result in an unmitigated policy disaster, simply because of their popularity and cultural acceptance.

In fact, exactly that happened in the 1920s: In 1920, the federal government attempted to prohibit alcohol sales through the 18th Amendment . Experts and historians widely consider this policy, popularly known as Prohibition, a failure and even a disaster , since it led to a massive black market for alcohol that funded criminal organizations across the US. It took Congress just 14 years to repeal Prohibition.

Alcohol and tobacco are also major parts of the US economy. In 2013, alcohol sales totaled $124.7 billion (excluding purchases in bars and restaurants), and tobacco sales amounted to $108 billion. If lawmakers decided to prohibit and dismantle these legal industries, it would cost the economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Lawmakers were well aware of these cultural and economic issues when they approved the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 . So they exempted alcohol and tobacco from the definition of controlled substances.

If these drugs weren’t exempted, tobacco and alcohol would likely be tightly controlled under the current scheduling regime. Mark Kleiman , one of the nation’s leading drug policy experts, argued both would be considered schedule 1 substances if they were evaluated today, since they’re highly abused, addictive, detrimental to one’s health and society, and have no established medical value.

All of this gets to a key point about the war on drugs: Policymakers don’t evaluate drugs in a vacuum. They also consider the socioeconomic implications of banning a substance, and whether those potential drawbacks are worth the gains of potentially reducing substance use and abuse.

But this type of analysis of the pros and cons is also why critics want to end the war on drugs today. Even if the drug war has successfully brought down drug use and abuse, its effects on budgets , civil rights , and international violence are so great and detrimental that the minor impact it may have on drug use might not be worth the costs.

How much of the war on drugs is tied to international treaties?

If lawmakers decided to stop the war on drugs tomorrow, a major hurdle could be international agreements that require restrictions and regulations on certain drugs.

There are three major treaties: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 , the Convention on Psychotropic Drugs of 1971 , and the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 . Combined, the treaties require participants to limit and even prohibit the possession, use, trade, and distribution of drugs outside of medical and scientific purposes, and work together to stop international drug trafficking.

There is a lot of disagreement among drug policy experts, enforcers, and reformers about the stringency of the treaties. Several sections of the conventions allow countries some flexibility so they don’t violate their own constitutional protections. The US, for example, has never enforced penalties on inciting illicit drug use on the basis that it would violate rights to freedom of speech.

Many argue that any move toward legalization of use, possession, and sales is in violation of international treaties. Under this argument, some governments — including several US states and Uruguay — are technically in violation of the treaties because they legalized marijuana for personal possession and sales.

Others say that countries have a lot of flexibility due to the constitutional exemptions in the conventions. Countries could claim, for instance, that their protections for right to privacy and health allow them to legalize drugs despite the conventions. When it comes to individual states in the US, the federal government argues that America’s federalist system allows states some flexibility as long as the federal government keeps drugs illegal.

“It’s pretty clear that the war on drugs was waged for political reasons and some countries have used the treaties as an excuse to pursue draconian policies,” said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program. “Nevertheless, we’ve seen a number of countries drop criminal penalties for minor possession of all drugs. We’ve seen others put drugs into a pharmaceutical model, including the prescription of heroin to people with serious addictions. This seems completely possible within the treaties.”

Even if a country decided to dismantle prohibition and violate the treaties, it’s unclear how the international community would respond. If the US, for example, ended prohibition, there’s little other countries could do to interfere; there’s no international drug court, and sanctions would be very unlikely for a country as powerful as America.

Still, Martin Jelsma, an international drug policy expert at the Transnational Institute, argued that ignoring or pulling out of the international drug conventions could seriously damage America’s standing around the world. “Pacta sunt servanda (‘agreements must be kept’) is the most fundamental principle of international law and it would be very undermining if countries start to take an ‘a-la-carte’ approach to treaties they have signed; they cannot simply comply with some provisions and ignore others without losing the moral authority to ask other countries to oblige to other treaties,” Jelsma wrote in an email. “So our preference is to acknowledge legal tensions with the treaties and try to resolve them.”

To resolve such issues, many critics of the war on drugs hope to reform international drug laws in 2016 during the next General Assembly Special Session on drugs .

“There is tension with the tax-and-regulate approach to marijuana in some jurisdictions,” Malinowska-Sempruch said. “But it’s all part of a process, and that’s why we hope the UN debate in 2016 is as open as possible, so that we can settle some of these questions and, if necessary, modernize the system.”

Until then, any country taking steps to revamp its drug policy regime could face criticisms and a loss of credibility from its international peers.

How do other countries deal with drugs?

There is a lot of variety in how different countries have adopted the UN conventions , ranging from levels of enforcement even more stringent than US drug laws to outright decriminalization. Here are a few examples:

• China carries out some of the harshest punishments for illicit drug trafficking. In the lead-up to International Anti-Drug Day , Chinese officials unveiled executions and other harsh punishments for drug traffickers in 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , 2010 , and 2009 .
• The United Kingdom maintains a classification system similar to America’s scheduling system , with criminal penalties set based on a drug’s classification. For example, selling class A substances can get someone up to life in prison, while class B sentences are limited to a maximum of 14 years.
• Portugal in 2001 decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. A 2009 report authored by Glenn Greenwald for the libertarian Cato Institute found drug use fell among teenagers in Portugal following decriminalization, but use ticked up for young adults ages 20 to 24.
• Uruguay in 2012 legalized marijuana for personal use and sales to eliminate a major source of revenue for violent drug cartels. The government is now working to establish regulations for the sales and distribution of pot.

The varied approaches show that even though the US has been a major leader in the global war on drugs, its model of combating drug use and trafficking domestically is hardly the only option. Other countries have looked at the pros and cons and decided on vastly different drug policy regimes, with varying degrees of success.

What’s the case for focusing more on rehabilitation and addiction treatment?

The most cautious reform to the drug war puts more emphasis on rehabilitation instead of locking up drug users in prison, but it does this without decriminalizing or legalizing drugs.

This is the approach recently embraced by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, which plans to increase funding for rehabilitation programs in the coming years. The Obama administration also approved several legal and regulatory reforms , including Obamacare , that increased access to addiction treatment through health insurance. (However, the federal government still spends billions each year on conventional law enforcement operations against drugs.)

Drug courts , which even some conservatives like former Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) support, are an example of the rehabilitation-focused approach. Instead of throwing drug offenders into jail or prison, these courts send them to rehabilitation programs that focus on treating addiction as a medical, not criminal, problem. (The Global Commission on Drug Policy, however, argues that drug courts can end up nearly as punitive as the full criminalization of drugs, because the courts often enforce total drug abstinence with the threat of incarceration. Since relapse is a normal part of rehabilitation, the threat of incarceration means a lot of nonviolent drug offenders can end up back in jail or prison through drug courts.)

Other countries have taken even more drastic steps toward rehabilitation, some of which acknowledge that not all addicts can be cured of drug dependency. Several European countries prescribe and administer , with supervision, heroin to a small number of addicts who prove resistant to other treatments. These programs allow some addicts to satisfy their drug dependency without a large risk of overdose and without resorting to other crimes to obtain drugs, such as robbery and burglary.

Researchers credit the heroin-assisted treatment program in Switzerland, the first national scheme of its kind, with reductions in drug-related crimes and improvements in social functioning, such as stabilized housing and employment. But some supporters of the war on drugs, such as the International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy , argue that these programs give the false impression that drug habits can be managed safely, which could weaken the social stigma surrounding drug use and lead more people to try dangerous drugs.

For drug policymakers, the question is whether potentially breaking this stigma — and perhaps leading to more drug use — is worth the benefit of getting more people the treatment they need. Generally, drug policy experts agree that this tradeoff is worth it.

What’s the case for decriminalizing drugs?

Pointing to the drug war’s failure to significantly reduce drug use, many drug policy experts argue that the criminalization of drug possession is flawed and has contributed to the massive rise of incarceration in the US. To these experts, the answer is decriminalizing all drug possession while keeping sales and trafficking illegal — a scheme that would, in theory, keep nonviolent drug users out of prison but still let law enforcement go after illicit drug supplies.

Mark Kleiman , one of the leading drug policy experts in the country, once opposed the idea of decriminalization, but he warmed up to it after looking at the evidence. “What I’ve learned since then,” he said, “is nobody’s got any empirical evidence that shows criminalization reduces consumption noticeably.”

Kleiman said decriminalization could be paired with a focus on rehabilitation. He advocated for policies like 24/7 Sobriety Programs that require twice-daily alcohol testing for every single person convicted of drunk driving; anyone who fails the test is swiftly sent to jail for a few days. In South Dakota, alcohol-related traffic deaths declined by 33 percent between 2006 and 2007 — the highest decrease in the nation — after implementation of a 24/7 Sobriety Program.

In a paper , Kleiman analyzed a similar program in Hawaii for illicit drug users. Participants in that program had large reductions in positive drug tests and were significantly less likely to be arrested during follow-ups at three months, six months, and 12 months.

"Nobody's got any empirical evidence that shows criminalization reduces consumption noticeably"

A 2009 report from the libertarian Cato Institute found that after Portugal decriminalized all drugs, people were more willing to seek out rehabilitation programs. “The most substantial barrier to offering treatment to the addict population was the addicts’ fear of arrest,” Glenn Greenwald, who authored the paper, wrote. “One prime rationale for decriminalization was that it would break down that barrier, enabling effective treatment options to be offered to addicts once they no longer feared prosecution. Moreover, decriminalization freed up resources that could be channeled into treatment and other harm reduction programs.”

As with heroin-assisted treatment programs, supporters of the war on drugs argue decriminalization legitimizes and increases drug use by removing the social stigma attached to it. But the research doesn’t appear to support this point.

Some drug policy reform advocates and experts, however, are critical of decriminalization without the legalization of sales. Isaac Campos , a drug historian at the University of Cincinnati, argued that keeping the drug market in criminal hands lets them maintain a huge source of revenue. “The black market might even be fueled somewhat by the fact that people won’t be arrested anymore, because maybe more people will use,” Campos said. “We don’t know if that’s the case, but it’s possible.”

The concern for decriminalization supporters is that letting businesses come in and sell drugs could lead to aggressive marketing and advertising, similar to how the alcohol industry behaves today. This could lead to more drug use, particularly among problem users who would likely make up most of the demand for drugs. The top 10 percent of alcohol drinkers, for example, account for more than half the alcohol consumed in any given year in the US.

Decriminalization, then, is a bit of a compromise in reforming the war on drugs. It would reduce some of the incarceration caused by the drug war, but it would continue operations that seek to reduce drug trafficking and hopefully make a drug habit less affordable and accessible.

What’s the case for legalizing drugs?

Given the concerns about the illicit drug market as a source of revenue for violent drug cartels , some advocates call for outright legalization of drug use, possession, distribution, and sales. Exactly what legalization entails, however, can vary.

Drug policy experts point out that there are several ways to legalize a drug. For example, in a January 2015 report about marijuana legalization for the Vermont legislature , some of the nation's top drug policy experts outlined several alternatives, including allowing possession and growing but not sales (like DC), allowing distribution only within small private clubs, or having the state government operate the supply chain and sell pot.

The report particularly favors a state-run monopoly for marijuana production and sales to help eliminate the black market and produce the best public health outcomes, since regulators could directly control prices and who buys pot. Previous research found that states that maintained a government-operated monopoly for alcohol kept prices higher, reduced access to youth, and reduced overall levels of use — all benefits to public health. A similar model could be applied to other drugs.

There are other options. Governments could spend much, much more on prevention and treatment programs alongside legalization to deal with a potential wave of new drug users. They could require and regulate licenses to buy drugs, as some states do with guns. Or they could limit drug use to special facilities, like supervised heroin-injection sites or special facilities in which people can legally use psychedelics.

But Jeffrey Miron , an economist at Harvard University and the libertarian Cato Institute, supports full legalization, even it means the commercialization of drugs that are currently illegal. This, he said, is the only complete answer to eliminating the black market as a source of revenue for violent criminal groups.

When asked about full legalization, Mark Kleiman , a drug policy expert who supports decriminalization, pushed back against the concept. He said full legalization could foster and encourage more problem drug users. For-profit drug businesses, just like alcohol and tobacco companies, would prefer heavy users, because the heavy users tend to buy way more of their product. In Colorado’s legal marijuana market , for example, the heaviest 30 percent of users make up nearly 90 percent of demand for pot. “They are an industry with a set of objectives that flatly contradicts public interest,” Kleiman said.

Miron argued that even if sales or distribution are legalized, the harder drugs could be taxed and regulated similarly to or more harshly than tobacco and alcohol, although he personally doesn’t support that approach. “You could absolutely legalize it and have restrictions on commercialization,” Miron said. “Those should be separate questions.”

Kleiman argued the alcohol model has clear pitfalls . Alcohol still causes health problems that kill tens of thousands each year, it’s often linked to violent crime, and some experts consider it one of the most dangerous drugs .

Still, some evidence suggests the alcohol model could be adjusted to reduce its issues. In a big review of the evidence , Alexander Wagenaar, Amy Tobler, and Kelli Komro concluded that increasing alcohol taxes — and, as a result, getting people to drink less alcohol — would significantly reduce violence, crime, and other negative repercussions of alcohol use.

But there’s evidence that the drug war increases prices and decreases accessibility far beyond taxes and regulation could. A 2014 study by Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, found that prohibition multiplies hard drug prices by as much as 10 times, so legalization — by eliminating prohibition and allowing greater access to drugs — could greatly increase the rates of drug abuse.

The question of legalization, then, goes back once again to considerations about balancing the good and the bad: Is reducing the rates of drug abuse, particularly in the US, worth the carnage enabled by the money violent criminal organizations make off the black market for drugs? This is a common refrain of drug policy that’s repeated again and again by experts: A perfect solution doesn’t exist, so policymaking should focus on picking the best of many bad options.

“There are always choices,” Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, explained. “There is no framework available in which there’s not harm somehow. We’ve got freedom, pleasure, health, crime, and public safety. You can push on one and two of those — maybe even three with different drugs — but you can’t get rid of all of them. You have to pay the piper somewhere.”

Most Popular

• Georgia’s MAGA elections board is laying the groundwork for an actual stolen election
• Zelenskyy’s new plan to end the war, explained
• This ancient disease still kills 1 million people every year
• What the heck is “corn sweat” and is it making the Midwest more dangerous?
• Kids Today: Your guide to the confusing, exciting, and utterly new world of Gen Alpha

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in archives

Given the Court’s Republican supermajority, this case is unlikely to end well for trans people.

Learn about saving, spending, investing, and more in a monthly personal finance advice column written by Nicole Dieker.

The latest news, analysis, and explainers coming out of the GOP Iowa caucuses.

The economy’s stacked against us.

A Texas judge issued a national ruling against medication abortion. Here’s what you need to know.

Is the War on Drugs to Blame for the Fentanyl Crisis?

Plus: Mere discovery is overrated.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

What should be done about fentanyl? Has it affected your family or community?

Send your responses to [email protected] .

Conversations of Note

In The Washington Post , a series of articles on fentanyl includes a lot of stellar international reporting and the striking claim that the drug “is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49.”

But I am suspicious of the newspaper’s framing. Here is how one article began:

During the past seven years, as soaring quantities of fentanyl flooded into the United States, strategic blunders and cascading mistakes by successive U.S. administrations allowed the most lethal drug crisis in American history to become significantly worse, a Washington Post investigation has found. Presidents from both parties failed to take effective action in the face of one of the most urgent threats to the nation’s security, one that claims more lives each year than car accidents, suicides or gun violence … The Drug Enforcement Administration, the country’s premier anti-narcotics agency, stumbled through a series of missteps as it confronted the biggest challenge in its 50-year history. The agency was slow to respond as Mexican cartels supplanted Chinese producers, creating a massive illicit pharmaceutical industry that is now producing more fentanyl than ever. The Department of Homeland Security, whose agencies are responsible for detecting illegal drugs at the nation’s borders, failed to ramp up scanning and inspection technology at official crossings, instead channeling $11 billion toward the construction of a border wall that does little to stop fentanyl traffickers.

Implicit here is the notion that waging the drug war more aggressively and more effectively could have stopped the surge of fentanyl into the country and the overdose deaths that followed. What if, instead, today’s surge in fentanyl deaths is a by-product of decades of aggressively waging the War on Drugs? Absent prohibition, it seems unlikely that many would choose a drug so powerful that even a tiny amount can kill you. But when drugs are illegal, a narcotic that can get you high even in tiny amounts is very useful, because it is easier to smuggle and to hide.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, “seizures of fentanyl sourced from China average less than one kilogram in weight, and often test above 90 percent concentration of pure fentanyl.” Ramping up scanning at the border is never going to stop enough fentanyl to solve the problem.

Meanwhile, in Tijuana “there have been 1,900 homicides here this year so far, making it the deadliest city in Mexico,” the Post reports . This is largely due to the drug cartels that prohibition enriches. “Tijuana has long been a major transit point for illicit goods into the United States: alcohol during Prohibition, waves of marijuana and cocaine after that. Now, it is a city of fentanyl. It is the most prolific trafficking hub into the United States for the drug and, increasingly, a city of users.” Why continue a drug-prohibition policy that fuels violence while failing to prevent deadly new synthetic drugs and massive surges of overdoses in multiple countries?

Read: What does a good health-care system look like?

An Occasion to Celebrate

Megan McArdle knows that we’re still a long way off from getting abundant cheap energy from nuclear fusion. Still, she argues , a net energy gain from a fusion reaction is worth celebrating:

You are literally made of stardust. Most of the atoms in your body were forged in the core of some ancient sun, as lighter elements fused into heavier ones; you are the vicarious survivor of star fire and supernovas. Now your species is making stars — tiny ones to be sure, and very ephemeral, but nonetheless we are inching toward mastering the very process that made our world. This shift from product to producer would be wondrous even if it didn’t hold out hope for an energy revolution as profound as the shift from horsepower to fossil fuels. I won’t try to sketch out how much steady, reliable, indefinitely renewable clean energy could transform society. I couldn’t possibly predict, any more than the 18th-century scholars fiddling with Leyden jars could have foretold ice cream cakes and social media influencers. But the energy they ultimately unleashed — along with their fellow tinkerers on steam engines — made possible humanity’s greatest period of flourishing. … We went from a world where the average person lived at subsistence level and half of children died before reaching adulthood to one where most children survive to their 15th birthdays and end up on average healthier, better fed, more lavishly entertained and more comfortable than a medieval king. Obviously, the journey from poverty to abundance was fueled by many technological breakthroughs, but all of it — from drug development to fiber-optic lines to water treatment plants — was possible only because a new source of power delivered many times what human or animal muscle could manage. As Andrew McAfee points out in his book “ More From Less ,” from 1800 to 1970, the United States’ gross domestic product and its energy consumption rose in near lockstep. They eventually decoupled, in part because the costs of burning hydrocarbons forced us to look for ways to economize. But what if we didn’t have to economize?

May we live to find out.

Mere Discovery Is Overrated

My colleague Derek Thompson points out that although Americans tend to celebrate inventors and innovators, their eureka moments don’t matter much when their advances are not implemented.

He writes :

The U.S. has more Nobel Prizes for science than the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and Austria combined. But if there were a Nobel Prize for the deployment and widespread adoption of technology—even technology that we invented, even technology that’s not so new anymore—our legacy wouldn’t be so sterling. Americans invented the first nuclear reactor, the solar cell, and the microchip, but today, we’re well behind a variety of European and Asian countries in deploying and improving these technologies. We were home to some of the world’s first subway systems, but our average cost per mile for tunnel projects today is the highest in the world. The U.S. did more than any other nation to advance the production of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, but also leads the developed world in vaccine refusal … Implementation, not mere invention, determines the pace of progress—a lesson the U.S. has failed to heed for the past several generations … The U.S. remains the world’s R&D factory, but when it comes to building, we are plainly going backwards.

How to Solve Homelessness

The obvious answer to homelessness is to build more housing, but year after year, a consensus around that strategy fails to emerge, even as housing scarcity causes lots of homelessness.

My colleague Jerusalem Demsas writes :

Why are there so many more homeless people in California than Texas? Why are rates of homelessness so much higher in New York than West Virginia? … Yes, examining who specifically becomes homeless can tell important stories of individual vulnerability created by disability or poverty, domestic violence or divorce. Yet when we have a dire shortage of affordable housing, it’s all but guaranteed that a certain number of people will become homeless. In musical chairs, enforced scarcity is self-evident. In real life, housing scarcity is more difficult to observe—but it’s the underlying cause of homelessness. … A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue. Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups that have historically been shunted to the peripheries of the housing market. But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple . This contradiction drives the ever more visible crisis.

My colleague Annie Lowrey has similar views. She writes :

High rents and sale prices in major cities are a policy choice, one that puts gates around many of our most wonderful places and taxes the folks lucky enough to live there. And it is unfair to all of us. A United States with more abundant housing in its big cities would have a more productive, vibrant, and dynamic economy too.

And I agree, for reasons I explained in my 2021 feature on California :

The NIMBY impulse is not new. Carey McWilliams observed in 1949 that although Californians were fascinated by their state’s phenomenal growth, they were simultaneously “disturbed and even repelled” by it. “They want the state to grow, and yet they don’t want it to grow,” he explained. “They like the idea of growth and expansion, but withdraw from the practical implications.” But when he wrote those words, amid a severe housing shortage, policy makers in both parties still encouraged countless small developers to build houses and apartments as rapidly as possible. Today matters are much worse. The most powerful factions of residents do not want their state to grow and do not accept the fact that it surely will. For 40 years, they haven’t just failed to adequately plan for the housing needs of California’s current population; upper-income residents in San Diego and the Bay Area as surely as those in Los Angeles have deliberately fought to restrict the supply of housing. Even now, when housing costs are the primary reason that a majority of registered voters say they’ve considered moving, and when politicians in both parties pay lip service to the problem, there is insufficient political will to attempt a plausible solution. And the forces paralyzing the state are all the more entrenched because some of them believe themselves to be protecting the California Dream. I feel the pull of their backward-looking vision. Years ago, I spent two glorious seasons in the Sea Ranch, a 10-mile stretch on the rugged coast of Sonoma County where beaches strewn with mussels rise to majestic bluffs; then to meadows where deer frolic and sleep; and, just beyond, hills of redwood forest that thrive in the fogs that roll in many evenings. If 50 million people could sustainably inhabit a state where all coastal development resembled the Sea Ranch, I’d sign up. In that fantasy, San Franciscans would all live in detached Victorians and Angelenos would all reside in prewar bungalows. Central Valley farmers could use all the water they wanted on their crops without affecting commercial fishermen, who could catch all of the fish they wanted forever. There would be no lines at Disneyland. Those expectations, fantastical as they sound today, seemed plausible within living memory. The Inexhaustible Sea was published in 1954. Around 1970, the Sea Ranch was considered a model of sustainable development. On rainy winter days in my 1980s youth, there actually were no lines at Disneyland. I once went on Space Mountain 18 times in a row, finding no one in line each time the roller coaster ended. Imagine if, in middle age, I felt entitled to pass laws so I could keep doing that into my 70s and 80s, no matter how many kids never got a turn. That is the anti-growth Californian, mistaking nostalgia for justice.

Read: Will an influential conservative brain trust stand up to Trump?

On The White Lotus Season Finale (With Spoilers)

If you’ll indulge a speculative take about the prestige TV show that secular cosmopolitan media elites are all watching at the moment: According to conventional wisdom, Tanya, the ultra-wealthy heiress, was betrayed by her husband, Greg, who planned to steal her fortune—prenup be damned—by conspiring with a group of “high-class gays” to murder her.

But is that what happened? I am among those who suspect thatTanya’s prenuptial agreement was void in the event that she was unfaithful , not in the event that she was murdered . The “high-class gays” threw their fabulous party at a Palermo villa not to murder her, but to orchestrate her infidelity. If their intention was for a Mafia-affiliated local to kill her, why take her to Palermo at all? Why take her to the opera? Why ply her with cocaine? Why have a handsome younger man seduce her? Why refrain from murdering her on the open sea, an easy place to kill, and take her back to within swimming distance of Taormina?

The murder theory makes no sense. I know what some of you are thinking. “How do you explain the duffel bag she found with a gun, duct tape, and a rope?” To which I say: If you’re a Mafia dude intent on murdering a 60-something woman on a yacht, do you need a rope or duct tape if you already have a gun? Of course not. At most, they were going to kidnap Tanya so that Greg could pay her ransom, giving the high-class gays their cut. Regardless, the main thing was for Tanya to have sex with the Mafia dude. Once that happened, her prenup was void and Greg stood to make a fortune. What’s more plausible, a prenup clause where the new husband you don’t quite trust gets everything if you cheat … or one where he gets everything if you get murdered?

Provocation of the Week

In The Free Press, Rupa Subramanya critiques one of the internet era’s most important financial companies:

The people who founded PayPal—the so-called PayPal Mafia—include Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sacks and Max Levchin. All are champions of free speech. All have expressed shock and dismay at what is happening to the company they created. Several founders agreed to talk with The Free Press for this article. “If the online forms of your money are frozen, that’s like destroying people economically, limiting their ability to exercise their political voice,” Thiel told me. “There’s something about destroying people economically that seems like a far more totalitarian thing.” When they launched PayPal, in December 1998, the founders imagined themselves connecting people to the global economy by sidestepping the hefty fees charged by credit-card companies and the inflationary policies of poorly run governments. Early PayPal users had Palm Pilots, and they would beam money from their devices to anyone with an email address. It was especially popular among eBay users. “PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before,” Thiel said at a company meeting, in late 1999. “It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means, because if they try the people will switch to dollars or pounds or yen, in effect, dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.” Since those early heady days, PayPal has amassed 429 million active accounts. Fifty-eight percent of Americans use PayPal, and in 2021, there were 19.3 billion PayPal transactions. It now has a market valuation of $84 billion. But the company that was meant to liberate countless individuals is becoming something else. Increasingly, it is becoming a police officer. It is deciding what is right and wrong, who gets to be heard, who is silenced. It is locking out of the financial system those people or brands that have slipped outside the parameters of acceptable discourse, those who threaten the consensus of the gatekeepers. The consensus is hard to articulate; it is an ideology lacking clearly defined ideological contours. But the tenets of that consensus are unmistakable: the new progressive politics around race and gender are a force for good, the Covid lockdown was just, the war in Ukraine is noble, and an unfettered exchange of ideas and opinions is an unacceptable threat to all of the above.

The English professor and writer Alan Jacobs adds , “We tend to think of social-credit systems as the province of governments, but the big American tech companies are right now imposing their own such system — and in some ways are better placed to do it than our government would be.”

That’s all for this week––see you on Monday.

About the Author

More Stories

Seven Questions That Should Be Easy for Harris to Answer

Why I Hate Instagram Now

SmartDrugPolicy

Global Drug Policy for the 21st Century

Reagan Raises the Battle Flag Against Drugs (1981-1989)

The war on drugs picked up steam under President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the first president to systematically target the entire drug chain from producers to dealers to users.

Prior strategies of harm reduction were replaced with ones of deterrence and by attacking the drug problem at its source, namely producer countries like Colombia. In his first year, the drug budget allocated to law enforcement increased 20% while that for treatment declined 25%. In 1981, Congress passed the Department of Defense Authorization Act, sanctioning the military’s involvement in drug interdiction. The Pentagon’s budget for combatting drugs leaped from $1 million to $196 million within five years. Around 70% of the budget was committed to attacking drugs in source countries though interdiction and eradication, while 30% was used for education, prevention and treatment. Emblematic of Reagan’s aggressive stance, in a 1982 speech on his approach to fighting drugs, he declared that ‘we’re taking down the surrender flag…[and] running up the battle flag.’ The first lady, Nancy Reagan, became famous for her ‘Just Say No’ campaign to dissuade American teens from experimenting with drugs and Drug Resistance Education (DARE) programs were introduced throughout the nation’s schools.

Reagan complemented tough rhetoric and financial resources with a series of laws raising mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, allowing for the seizure of assets without conviction and the federal death penalty for drug kingpins. These were the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Amendment Act, and the 1988 Drug Free Workplace Act. Most notably, the 1986 Act mandated a five-year minimum sentence without parole for possession of 5 grams of crack and 500 grams for powder cocaine, which resulted in 100:1 disparity between the two drugs that seemed to unfairly target inner city minorities who were more involved with sale and consumption of crack. The 1988 Act applied mandatory minimum sentencing even for first time possession but only for crack cocaine. Finally, the 1988 National Narcotics Leadership Act established the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) with a director who would report directly to the president and be responsible for formulating policy to control both drug demand and supply.

In 1988, the U.N. followed suit, establishing the last of its three major drug treaties. The Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances provided the INCB with greater legal muscle to enforce its previous two treaties, with a particular focus on the sale and possession of drugs in order to the fight drug cartels. It also provided a legal basis for extradition among countries where such bi-lateral frameworks were absent. Whereas the previous two U.N. treaties targeted producers and traffickers (i.e. Latin America), the 1988 Convention forced consumer countries (i.e. the U.S.) to enforce demand reduction.

• Posted in: Drug Use & Control - A Brief History

Posted by Anaïs Faure

New Documents Reveal the Bloody Origins of America’s Long War on Drugs

O ver fifty years ago on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared to the Washington press corps that America had a new enemy—narcotics. “America’s public enemy number one,” Nixon claimed, “is drug abuse.” To fight it, it was necessary “to wage a new, all-out offensive.” Within days, U.S. newspapers took up the metaphor. The U.S. was now engaged in a “war on drugs.”

Nixon’s speech marked the beginning of a new era of American drug policy. His announcement would lead to the mass imprisonment of domestic drug users from the 1980s onwards. But the real effect of Nixon’s speech occurred abroad. Here, rhetoric became reality; metaphor got real. Nixon’s speech let drug cops off the leash. And it sparked off a wave of extreme violence, which many drug producing countries in Central and Latin America are still living with today.

Nowhere was this militarization of the drug effort felt more than in Mexico. By the end of the 1960s, the country produced around 90 per cent of the booming marijuana industry. And after the French police raided the heroin factories of Marseilles in 1972, Mexico’s traffickers moved into producing heroin for a growing market of returning Vietnam vets and post-hippy addicts.

From 1971 onwards hundreds of American drug agents descended on Mexico’s border smuggling hubs. First, they came from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). And when that folded in 1973, they were agents for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). They often teamed up with Mexican soldiers and federal police officers (PJF), now flush with money and equipment paid for by the American government.

For fifty years we have known little about this initial campaign or its effects. Most U.S. and Mexican reports were classified. Neither the American agents nor the Mexican drug cops were keen to brag about what they were doing. Yet, over the past eight years I have tried to piece together the reality of this first stage of the war on drugs. My investigation has taken in new declassified documents, the oral testimonies of former cops, drug traffickers and Mexican farmers, and an extraordinary transcript of a 1975 grand jury investigation into BNDD practices. Together, for the first time they offer the grim picture of the effects of Nixon’s words did south of the border.

Officially American agents were in Mexico to pose as potential drug buyers, perform buy-and-busts and then hand over the traffickers to the Mexican cops. But they also employed a host of unsanctioned methods.

The first of these tactics was murder. The Mexican federal cops, in particular, were well known for using ruthless force against traffickers. There were few U.S. agents working south of the border who did not witness at least one fatal shootout or cold-blooded assassination. Some U.S. agents even took part in the killings. One BNDD agent, who worked down in Mexico under future Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, described to a grand jury investigation one such incident. One of his colleagues, while working in Ciudad Juárez, ordered another colleague to shoot a fleeing suspect in the back. The colleague refused. So the first agent “emptied the gun into [the suspect] . . . until he was shot to pieces.” According to the former agent, he had heard that Arpaio asked his superiors not to investigate and they agreed.

In addition, the use of torture was extremely common . Talking to DEA agents, reading through Mexican trial documents, trafficker memoirs, and a few, scattered newspaper exposés, it seems there were few U.S. agents who did not at least witness torture. Many encouraged it and many got involved.

The ex-BNDD agent in his grand jury testimony described his shock at the prevalence of the practice.

“ Down there, I really got an eyeful. They [BNDD agents] actually participated in the torture—anybody, it didn’t matter a shit who it was. They would actually participate in the torture of these god damn people. I got caught up in a god damn gun fight there myself and killed men. Now we were running into this kind of stuff constantly, all the time.”

After Nixon resigned in August 1974 the DEA pressed the new president, Gerald Ford, to extend these tactics from border towns to the drug-producing villages of Mexico’s interior. The mission involved hundreds of DEA agents, thousands of Mexican cops and tens of thousands of Mexican soldiers. They tracked down opium and marijuana fields, called in helicopters, sprayed the crops with powerful herbicides, and then rounded up the suspected growers. It was known as Operation Condor. But the DEA agents who witnessed it knew it as “the atrocities.” They joked darkly that the federal police commander in charge, Jaime Alcalá García “killed more people than smallpox.”

Recently declassified Mexican secret service documents reveal that in 1978 a Mexican lawyer was tossed into the cells with the Operation Condor drug suspects. He took their testimonies and compiled a report. Even for those of us inured to reading about drug war violence, it makes for disturbing reading. In all, he listed eighteen distinct types of torture, including beating, waterboarding (with chili-infused sparkling water), near-drowning in shit-filled water and rape.

But beyond the victims, this kind of no-holds-barred repression also multiple secondary effects. First, in the U.S., Nixon’s rhetoric (and his successors) pushed the focus from U.S. drug demand to international drug supply. In doing so, politicians now framed the war as foreign conflict which pitched Americans against murderous gangs of overseas criminals. It is a narrative that continues to this day and was central to President Donald Trump’s argument for a border wall.

Second, the war on drugs put torture at the center of Mexican investigative techniques. The logic was as follows. The Americans wanted arrests. Yet drug crime, unlike other felonies, often had no direct victim. Cases couldn’t rely on the testimony of witnesses or complainants. (Few hippies went to the police to complain that they had been scammed buying dope.) So even if Mexican investigators found narcotics, they also needed confessions. To get these quickly and effectively, they employed torture – both physical brutality and psychological threats. And the judiciary acquiesced to the practice. In a series of landmark decisions, the Mexican Supreme Court gave confessions “full probatorial value” regardless of how they were obtained.

Though laws have changed, the logic remains. And most drug confessions are still extracted through torture. In one recent study Mexican academics concluded that between 60 and 70 per cent of suspects experienced torture.

And it didn’t really change anything despite the billions the U.S. poured in and the lives destroyed. In subsequent decades, the big traffickers just moved to cocaine rather than homegrown marijuana and heroin. Now Mexico is responsible for an estimated ninety percent of the cocaine sold to and exchanged inside the U.S. And traffickers have turned their expertise at transnational smuggling to moving other imported narcotics like fentanyl.

Yet, perhaps the most important effect was on the way the trade was managed. Up to the 1970s, corruption was limited. Mexico’s state governors and small-town mayors protected the traffickers, often for a slice of the profits. But they were wary about letting the business spiral out of control. If it did, they could be prosecuted or sacked.

But the war on drugs changed this arrangement. As federal cops and soldiers descended on border towns and drug growing zones, they started to take over the protection of the traffickers. Corruption moved up a level. Police chiefs and even three star generals now ran the protection rackets; they commanded the cartels. And they answered to no one. The U.S. authorities could do little. If the Americans demanded arrests, these new, high-level protectors would simply cough up or occasionally murder a cartel kingpin and let the others continue unmolested.

It is an arrangement that continues to this day. Capturing El Chapo has done nothing to cut drug supply or increase drug prices. Meanwhile the prosecution of former Mexican federal police chief, Genaro García Luna, remains mired in diplomatic disagreements. And last year the former head of the Mexican military, Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, was arrested but then promptly released back to Mexico by the DEA.

The war that Nixon started shows little sign of stopping.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
• What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?
• How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
• Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
• How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

NCJRS Virtual Library

Rhetoric in the war on drugs: the triumphs and tragedies of public relations, additional details.

88 Post Road West , Westport , CT 06881 , United States

No download available

Availability, related topics.

A moral argument against the war on drugs

Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor, Monash University

Junior research fellow, University of Oxford

Disclosure statement

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

University of Oxford provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

Former Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has argued that the war on drugs has failed and cannabis should be decriminalised. He argued that the hardline approach has brought “disastrous” consequences for Latin America. Having just returned from Rio, we can only agree.

One of us was staying with an eminent professor of philosophy. We were returning to her house with her 11-year-old daughter, only to have our way blocked by police with machine guns. They were hunting a drug lord in the local favela – this road was the only escape route and they were preparing for possible altercation.

Cardoso highlights the practical failure of a zero-tolerance approach. A zero-tolerance approach to a crime like taking drugs must always fail, in the same way as a zero-tolerance approach to alcohol, prostitution or drugs in sport will always fail. Paradoxically, the worst thing you could do to the drug lords in Rio is not to wage a war on them, but to decriminalise cocaine and marijuana. They would be out of business in one day. Supplies could be monitored, controlled and regulated, the harm to users and third parties significantly reduced.

The case for legalising drugs has been made often, most recently by Australia’s foreign minister, Bob Carr, who this week co-signed a report declaring “the war on drugs has failed”. The argument is nearly always put forward in terms of the burdens that the drug war has imposed on us in terms of crime and public health. And it is true that these things give us good reason to abandon Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. But we so rarely hear a moral argument in favour of liberalising drug laws. This is a mistake.

Although experts have told us time and time again that things would be better without the drug war, politicians have ignored the expert advice because voters do not want drugs laws to be loosened. And voters feel this way not because they think they know better than the experts, but because they have moral objections to drug use. There is a hidden moral debate driving the war on drugs that we never seem to bring out in the open.

The original drug prohibitions had a moral rationale rather than a practical one. It began with the American prohibition of opium, which was primarily motivated by a moral objection to white people smoking in Chinese-run opium dens. This began a prohibition movement in the United States. In 1913, marijuana — which was used almost exclusively by Mexican and Indian immigrants — was prohibited for the first time by the state of California.

Today, when new drugs are added to the long list of illegal substances, it is because they are judged to be “addictive”, not because they are harmful. The United States’ Controlled Substances Act calls for a drug to be prohibited if it has “a high potential for abuse” and if it “may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence”.

The drug does not have to be harmful in any other sense. According to US government statistics, paracetamol (acetaminophen) is involved in nearly five times as many emergency room visits as MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often referred to as “ecstasy”), and it remains available in supermarkets around the world.

So the main reason that drugs like alcohol and caffeine are legal, but cocaine and MDMA are not, is that the latter are judged to be “addictive”. (Suspend for a moment the true belief that alcohol and caffeine are addictive.)

Addiction does harm the addict, to be sure. But self-harm cannot provide grounds for prohibiting a substance. As philosopher John Stuart Mill famously put it, the sole legitimate reason for interfering with a person’s liberty is when he risks harming others.

And while it is sometimes argued that the “drug problem” makes us all worse off, most of these harms flow directly from the zero-tolerance approach — drug prohibitions harm others when they are robbed, beaten or killed by those who run the black market of drugs.

It is sometimes argued by liberal-minded people that addictions warrant state interference because they render the addict incompetent, powerless to make an autonomous decision to take drugs. The addict becomes like a child in need of parental protection — or in this case the protection of the state. In this way “addiction” becomes a moral concept, not a form of harm. It is a condition that robs us of our moral status.

We have argued in a number of articles that such a view of addiction is false. People who take drugs are not suffering from a disease and they do not necessarily have some pathological failing of will power. They may be imprudent or irrational in taking drugs, but then again, we all are, nearly every day, in various ways when we eat unhealthily, engage in risky sports, smoke, drink or gamble.

Addicts may place to greater value on pleasure, or on excitement, or escape from reality, but their addictions are not different in kind to desires for other pleasurable activities. People become “addicted” to gambling, videogames, internet use, exercise, sex, carrots, sugar and water. These substances or activities do not “hijack” the brain — they provide pleasure utilising the same brain pathways as drugs. Every pleasurable activity is “addictive”.

The public discourse on drugs includes liberty, health, and crime, but it so rarely includes the value of pleasure. We do not have to be hedonists to believe that pleasure is one of the important goods in a person’s life. A liberal society should be neutral with regard to which pleasures people may pursue; it should not force people to conform to a particular conception of “good” and “bad” pleasures.

But more importantly, if every pleasurable behaviour can be addictive, then there can be no reason to believe that the pleasures of drug use are less important than the pleasures of good food and wine, of rock-climbing and football, or of browsing the internet. Each of these things is pleasurable, and hence each is addictive, and each can be harmful if done to excess. But we all have a right to pursue the pleasures we find valuable, even though each of these pleasures puts us at risk of addictions or addiction-like problems: alcoholism, pathological internet use, sex addiction, binge eating disorders, and so on.

The right to pursue pleasure gives us reason to legalise drugs, while addiction and self-harm fail to give us good reason to prohibit them. That is the essence of a strong moral argument against the war on drugs.

There remains one possible ground for interfering in liberty and retaining the ban on drugs. That ground is the public interest. If society were to be severely impaired by liberalisation of drug laws, that might be an extreme case that warrants a ban on drugs.

But our (admittedly limited) experience suggests the opposite — the Netherlands appears to have reduced its drug problem , without increasing its overall rate of drug use, by enacting relatively liberal drug laws for “soft” drugs like marijuana. And as Cardoso argues, a complete ban seems to be strongly against the public interest, keeping drug lords in business and the user and others in a position of severe vulnerability.

In the future, perhaps we will give up our squeamishness about drugs which provide pleasure. We could use modern pharmacological science to select or even design drugs which give us the pleasure or experiences we seek, but cheaply and without serious acute or chronic health risks. For the present, the drug which we can most freely obtain is one of the most addictive, one which contributes to violent behaviour, one which produces terrible chronic health effects and the worst withdrawal syndrome of all drugs. Alcohol.

The time has come to take a rational approach to drugs.

• War on Drugs
• Drug reform
• Drug policy

Director of STEM

Community member - Training Delivery and Development Committee (Volunteer part-time)

Chief Executive Officer

Finance Business Partner

Head of Evidence to Action

America’s War on Drugs Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

For close to four decades now, the American government has been trying to find a lasting solution for the drug abuse problem in the country. In his office days, President Richard Nixon identified drug abuse as a threat to the security of the nation. At the time, Nixon was concerned by the sudden surge of drug related arrests among young people and the relation that the trend had on the high rate of street crime at the time.

The American president felt that there was need to come up with a policy to fight the rising cases of drug abuse especially among young people. Despite the visible success of the Nixon campaign in the first few years of its implementation, the program lost its appeal causing the problem to escalate further. The reason why the program was not successful was partly due to some human rights campaigners who were calling for the legalization of drug use. (Grim, 2009)

According to the results of a poll released recently, majority of Americans want the usage of some drugs legalized. According to the findings, the people claim that if the drugs are made legal then they can become a source of income through taxes.

According to proponents of the legalization debate, the billions of dollars used by the government can be channeled into other development projects in the country. Further, they claim that some of the illegal drugs are not as dangerous as people depict them to be. In supporting their claim, they give an example of a substance like marijuana, which they claim to be less harmful than cigarettes.

On top of this, there are those who point out to the medicinal value of some outlawed drugs. The people in this category claim that outlawing a drug that is known to contain medicinal value is tantamount to denying the affected people medication and therefore the particular drugs should be legalized to make their access easy. (Grim, 2009)

Although some arguments presented by the advocates of drug legalization might be valid, there are other factors, which should be considered before they are adopted. As an individual, I am completely against the legalization of drugs. By looking at the claims presented by the legalization crusaders, one does not fail to notice that their claims are unfounded.

On the claim that the government would earn extra income from taxing the illegal drugs, one is led to ask what would then happen if all illegal substances were taxed to generate extra revenue for the government.

I believe that the government can look for other ways of raising revenue without legalizing the harmful drugs. On the other hand, although some of the banned drugs are known to have medicinal value, legalizing them would only lead to their abuse. What makes this people’s claim irrelevant is that the market is full of other legal drugs that can alleviate pain.

This leaves people with no doubt as to the motives of those calling for the legalization of drugs. Majority of the crusaders are actually owners of cartels that make money from the sale of the drugs. By organizing demonstrations to call for the legalization of drugs, what these people are trying to do is to take the attention of the authorities off their back. (KidsHealth, 2010)

According to researchers, drugs do no good for anyone. However, these drugs have been known to cause more harm to young people and who sadly are the biggest users of these drugs. By legalizing the drugs, the government would only be making them more accessible to young people hence increasing the problems associated with the drug usage.

According to experts, abuse of drugs is known to be a leading cause of heart diseases among young people. If the drugs were legalized, their usage would increase since the drugs would be readily available. This would in turn increase the rate of heart related deaths in the community. On top of this, drug users are known to perform poorly in school as compared to other students.

Even among adult users, drugs are known to impair ones reasoning ability something that in turn leads to doing dumb things. On top of this, drug usage is directly linked to the rising rate of crime in our country. By legalizing drugs, the rate of crime would definitely go up causing more insecurity for the nation. (KidsHealth, 2010)

The drug problem is not a new issue in America. For a long time, the government has been trying to look for ways to fight the vice. However, their efforts have been hampered by people who claim that banning the drugs goes against the constitution call for the protection of human rights. Although some of the claims presented by those calling for the legalization are legitimate, majority of them have ulterior motives in their calls.

If the government heeded their calls and legalized the drugs, then the problems associated with drug usage would definitely go up. These problems include drug related deaths and the rising rate of crime that is associated with drug usage. In order to protect the majority, the government should therefore fail to heed the calls made by these crusaders.

Grim, R. (2009) Majority of Americans Want Pot Legalized: Zogby Poll . Web.

KidsHealth. (2010) What You Need to Know About Drugs . Web.

• The Balkan Crisis: A Brief History
• The Vietnam War Outcomes
• Impact of Nixon and Kissinger on International Relations
• Should drugs be legalized?
• Why Is Marijuana Legalized In Some States And Not Others?
• Discussion: Legalizing Drugs of Abuse
• Use of Marijuana for the Medicinal Purposes
• Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
• Breaking Point of a Soul
• Terrorists and the Left and Right: Definitions & Examples
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, May 17). America’s War on Drugs. https://ivypanda.com/essays/americas-war-on-drugs/

"America’s War on Drugs." IvyPanda , 17 May 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/americas-war-on-drugs/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'America’s War on Drugs'. 17 May.

IvyPanda . 2018. "America’s War on Drugs." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/americas-war-on-drugs/.

1. IvyPanda . "America’s War on Drugs." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/americas-war-on-drugs/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "America’s War on Drugs." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/americas-war-on-drugs/.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

President Duterte’s War on Drugs Is a Pretense

He is using it to quash the opposition in the Philippines. I should know: I’m one of his victims.

By Leila de Lima

Ms. de Lima is a senator in the Philippines.

MANILA — Since taking office just over three years ago, President Rodrigo Duterte has not only overseen a murderous campaign on drug users and sellers. He has also unleashed a brazen assault on the country’s democratic institutions — at times, using his so-called war on drugs as a pretense for going after his political adversaries and dissenters .

I should know: I’m one of its victims. I am writing this essay from a prison cell in Camp Crame, the national Police Headquarters in Manila. I have spent the past two years here, after being arrested on fabricated drug-trafficking charges. But the only crime I committed was to use my platform as a senator to oppose the brutality of this administration’s campaign against drugs. And I hardly am the only target.

Mr. Duterte’s government has orchestrated the removal of a Supreme Court chief justice and harassed and sidelined Vice President Leni Robredo (she belongs to a different party ). Independent media houses have been bullied with bogus criminal charges ; one was effectively pressured into being sold to Duterte allies . The president has publicly threatened human rights activists and others with death — never mind that he or his aides often then downplay his statements as lighthearted banter .

But most worrisome, perhaps, is the administration’s effort to cow what little remains of the formal political opposition, often through politicized criminal cases.

Take my case. In 2016, shortly after Mr. Duterte’s election, I opened a Senate investigation to look into extrajudicial killings that were being committed under the guise of fighting drug crimes. The president’s retribution was as swift as it was ruthless.

He once said, “ I will have to destroy her in public .” He has called me an “ immoral woman ,” and in 2016 his allies claimed to possess a compromising sex video and threatened to show it to a congressional panel. In February 2017, I surrendered to the police after arrest warrants were issued against me. I have remained in detention since, facing three drug-related charges — for which the evidence is laughably thin. The United Nations , the European Union , various human rights groups and other experts have called the charges politically motivated.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — War on Drugs

Essays on War on Drugs

The "War on Drugs" is more than just a catchphrase; it's a socio-political battleground that has shaped nations and lives. Writing an essay on the war on drugs isn't just an academic exercise; it's an opportunity to explore the complexities, controversies, and consequences of this enduring struggle. 🚀 So, let's dive in and uncover the layers of this significant topic!

Essay Topics for "War on Drugs" 📝

Picking the right essay topic is crucial for an engaging and insightful essay. Here's how to choose one:

War on Drugs Argumentative Essay 🤨

Argumentative essays on the war on drugs require you to take a stance on drug-related issues. Here are ten compelling topics to consider:

• 1. Assess the effectiveness of the "War on Drugs" policy in reducing drug-related crime and addiction.
• 2. Analyze the racial disparities in drug-related arrests and sentencing in the context of the war on drugs.
• 3. Debate whether drug decriminalization or legalization would be a more effective approach to combating drug addiction.
• 4. Discuss the impact of the war on drugs on public health, particularly regarding drug-related diseases like HIV.
• 5. Evaluate the role of pharmaceutical companies in the opioid epidemic and the government's response.
• 6. Examine the relationship between drug policy and the prison industrial complex.
• 7. Debate the ethical implications of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses.
• 8. Analyze the impact of drug legalization in certain countries and its lessons for the United States.
• 9. Discuss the connection between drug trafficking and violence in the context of the war on drugs.
• 10. Explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of harm reduction strategies in drug policy.

War on Drugs Cause and Effect Essay 🤯

Cause and effect essays on the war on drugs focus on the reasons and consequences. Here are ten topics to explore:

• 1. Investigate the historical events and social factors that led to the initiation of the war on drugs.
• 2. Analyze the causes of drug addiction and its impact on individuals and communities.
• 3. Examine the effects of drug criminalization on marginalized communities and racial disparities.
• 4. Discuss the role of pharmaceutical companies in the opioid crisis and its consequences on public health.
• 5. Investigate the economic implications of the war on drugs, including law enforcement costs and lost tax revenue.
• 6. Examine the effects of mandatory minimum sentencing on the prison population and overcrowding.
• 7. Analyze the consequences of drug legalization in certain countries on drug use rates and crime.
• 8. Discuss the impact of drug addiction on family dynamics and social relationships.
• 9. Investigate the causes and effects of the opioid epidemic and its lasting impact on communities.
• 10. Examine the relationship between drug trafficking and violence in drug-producing regions.

War on Drugs Opinion Essay 😌

Opinion essays on the war on drugs allow you to express your personal viewpoints. Here are ten topics to consider:

• 1. Share your opinion on whether the war on drugs has been effective in achieving its goals.
• 2. Discuss your perspective on the role of addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one.
• 3. Express your thoughts on the influence of drug policy on racial and social inequalities.
• 4. Debate the ethical implications of the pharmaceutical industry's role in drug addiction.
• 5. Share your views on the potential benefits and drawbacks of legalizing or decriminalizing certain drugs.
• 6. Discuss the impact of drug addiction on individuals' lives and the importance of rehabilitation.
• 7. Express your opinion on the relationship between drug policy and incarceration rates.
• 8. Debate the merits of harm reduction strategies and their role in drug policy.
• 9. Share your perspective on the effectiveness of alternative approaches to drug addiction treatment.
• 10. Discuss your favorite documentary or book on the war on drugs and its impact on your understanding of the issue.

War on Drugs Informative Essay 🧐

Informative essays on the war on drugs aim to educate readers. Here are ten informative topics to explore:

• 1. Explore the history and timeline of the war on drugs in the United States.
• 2. Provide an in-depth analysis of the economics of the illegal drug trade and its global impact.
• 3. Investigate the origins and development of drug cartels and their influence on drug trafficking.
• 4. Analyze the role of drug education and prevention programs in reducing addiction rates.
• 5. Examine the effectiveness of various drug rehabilitation and treatment approaches.
• 6. Explore the impact of the opioid epidemic on healthcare systems and communities.
• 7. Provide insights into the historical context of drug criminalization and its consequences.
• 8. Analyze the relationship between drug policy and international cooperation in combating drug trafficking.
• 9. Discuss the effects of drug addiction on mental health and the importance of dual diagnosis treatment.
• 10. Examine the cultural and societal implications of drug use and the portrayal of addiction in the media.

War on Drugs Essay Example 📄

War on drugs thesis statement examples 📜.

Here are five examples of strong thesis statements for your war on drugs essay:

• 1. "The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has largely failed in achieving its goals, leading to a cycle of incarceration, addiction, and social inequality."
• 2. "In analyzing the consequences of drug criminalization, we uncover a complex web of racial disparities, overburdened prisons, and missed opportunities for effective addiction treatment."
• 3. "The opioid epidemic in the United States highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to drug addiction, one that includes harm reduction, treatment, and a reevaluation of drug policy."
• 4. "The war on drugs has disproportionately affected minority communities, perpetuating a cycle of poverty, addiction, and incarceration that demands systemic change."
• 5. "By examining the historical context and global impact of the war on drugs, we gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted challenges it poses and the need for a more humane approach."

War on Drugs Essay Introduction Examples 🚀

Here are three captivating introduction paragraphs to kickstart your essay:

• 1. "In the shadow of political slogans and criminalization, the war on drugs has silently raged on, leaving behind a trail of consequences that span generations. As we embark on this essay journey into the heart of the drug war, we peel back the layers of policy, addiction, and societal impact that have shaped the world we live in."
• 2. "Picture a battlefield where the combatants are not armies but ideologies, and the casualties are not soldiers but individuals and communities. The war on drugs is a battleground of ideas and actions, where the stakes are high, and the consequences profound. Join us as we navigate this terrain and confront the complex issues at its core."
• 3. "In a world divided by perspectives and policy, the war on drugs stands as a symbol of the challenges that society faces in addressing addiction and its consequences. As we venture into this essay's exploration, we are confronted with a paradox: the pursuit of justice intertwined with a cycle of injustice. Together, let's uncover the truth of this enduring struggle."

War on Drugs Conclusion Examples 🌟

Conclude your essay with impact using these examples:

• 1. "As we draw the curtains on this exploration of the war on drugs, we are left with a sobering realization: the battle is far from over. The path forward demands not only a reevaluation of policy but also a commitment to compassion, rehabilitation, and a society that understands the complexities of addiction."
• 2. "In the closing chapter of our essay, we reflect on the enduring legacy of the war on drugs, where victory remains elusive. The pages we've explored bear witness to a struggle that transcends generations, calling for a more empathetic and holistic approach to addiction and drug policy."
• 3. "As the echoes of the drug war persist, we stand at a crossroads of policy, justice, and humanity. The essay's journey marks a beginning—a call to action. Together, we have dissected the layers of the war on drugs, and it is now our responsibility to shape a future that prioritizes healing over punishment."

Discussion on The Issue of The War on Drugs

My views on the war on drugs in the philippines, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Why The War on Drugs Was Really a War on Race

The war on drugs and its impact on black and latino people, why the war on drugs is a waste of time, the importance of war on drugs in the united states, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

A Brief History of The War on Drugs

Approving drugs as a solution to war on drugs, the failure of war on drugs in america, negative outcomes of the war on drugs in north america, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

The Failure of America's War on Drugs

The consequences of the drug ban in switzerland, war on drugs in the usa: laws and issues, ending the drug war and changing policies, ending the war on drugs in america, anti-drug education: dare program, overview of the war on drugs in canada, the issue of drug trafficking on a global scale, an overview and evaluation of dare program, solving the heroin epidemic: improving the judiciary and relevant laws, the good versus bad in the war on drugs in the film the house i live in, theme of on the rainy river, the war on drugs in the film the house i live in by eugene jarecki, an overview of the legitimization and the improvement of drug rules in america, the problem of drug trafficking and its effects in the us, critical issue of drug decriminalization, the effects of the war on drugs on society, the pyrrhic defeat theory: reevaluating victory in warfare, analysis of brian turner's "here, bullet", the sniper summary.

The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the U.S. federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.

The War on Drugs began in June 1971 when U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” and increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and drug-treatment efforts.

Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Anti-Drug Abuse Act, Fair Sentencing Act (FSA).

The US spent $1 trillion fighting the war on drugs. More than 80% of all drug-related arrests in the US are for possession, not for sale. People of color are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites, even though they use the same amount of drugs. 80% of all globally produced opioids are consumed by Americans.

Relevant topics

• Serial Killer
• Domestic Violence
• Animal Cruelty
• Drunk Driving
• Child Abuse
• School Shooting

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free